The National Alliance for Health (NAFH) is a multi-sector partnership of senior leaders representing national health care and public health organizations and their members at the local, state, and regional levels. The focus of the NAFH is to actively inform the state of health policy with particular attention paid to decreasing health disparities in order to craft a focused agenda on improving the health and well-being of America’s communities. The NAFH’s unifying purpose is to advance collective action to create healthy and equitable communities, environments, and systems.

In 2019, the NAFH sought to gain an empirical understanding of the extent to which partners collaborate with one another to address six shared focus areas by conducting a network study, which was informed by theories of cross-sector partnerships, the Waters of Systems Change model, theories of inter-organizational collaborative networks, and theories of collective action. The population of study includes 15 national health care and public health organizations. Data were collected by electronic survey. The survey was distributed on 6/11/19 and closed on 6/26/19 with an 80% organizational response rate. Network analysis was the primary mode of inquiry and was conducted in Gephi 9.2.

Study results showed that partners frequently collaborated across sectors to address some priorities, such as Social Determinants of Health and Mental Health/Opioids/Substance Abuse, while collaboration to address other focus areas – such as Violence/Toxic Stress/Gun Control and Medicaid Policy – was less common. This information can be used to identify areas where additional coordination may be needed to improve specific health outcomes.

By the end of this presentation, participants will be able to: 1) discuss the NAFH’s work and identify focus areas that require collective attention at the national level, and 2) describe how network analysis can be used to assess multi-sector partnerships to achieve joint goals and outcomes.