Public Works Alliance | Career Pathways

We see Medicaid as a powerful component in a strategy to reform child serving systems around principles of healing and social justice.

Medicaid is more than just federal funding; it’s the tie that binds the major child serving-systems including education, child welfare, juvenile justice, early childhood, and clinical care, providing opportunity for collaboration and innovation.

It offers a unique federal entitlement for young people that can expand access to care and participation in programs as the need for behavioral health care soars among youth.

Our projects leverage Medicaid policy and reimbursement to reimagine behavioral health as a support for healthy development; not a response to pathology.

We believe in health care systems for people by people.

By working with youth leaders, state leadership and local system leaders, PWA helps transform child serving systems to be more effective and equitable by:

Focusing strategies in clinical and nonclinical settings.
Building community and social capital between and among beneficiaries to address the social determinants of health while re-directing the economic benefit of Medicaid to its beneficiaries.
Partnering with state Medicaid leadership and local safety net systems to shift agency (who does the work) and power (who get paid to do it) in safety net systems so that Medicaid beneficiaries can access family sustaining employment in the health care systems they access.
Leveraging the power and agency of impacted communities
Leveraging the power and wisdom of communities in the systems intended to serve them