A Conversation with Tina Yuen, CACHI’s New Program Director

We are pleased to welcome Tina Yuen as CACHI’s new Program Director. With more than 14 years of experience advancing equity and community health through policy and systems change, Tina brings deep expertise in community-driven, multisector collaboration. Her career has been defined by a strong commitment to building partnerships—across local governments, nonprofits, and community organizations—and centering the lived experiences of those most affected by systemic inequities. Prior to joining CACHI, she served as Managing Director of Policy at ChangeLab Solutions and held senior roles at Raimi+Associates and the National Associations of County & City Health Officials, where she focused on scaling impact and building strategic partnerships, both essential to CACHI’s mission.

In this conversation, Tina reflects on the road that brought her to CACHI, the policy shifts and challenges shaping health equity today, and the role Accountable Communities for Health (ACHs) can play in addressing health disparities and systemic inequities across California. She recently sat down with Lynea Diaz-Hagan, Senior Communications Advisor at CACHI, to share her insights on the value of ACHs—and what lies ahead on the path to more equitable systems.

Over the years, you’ve worked at the intersections of public health, policy, urban planning, and sustainability. What initially drew you to this work?

I started my career in healthcare, working as a pharmacist for five years. But even in pharmacy school, I knew this wasn’t my path. I wanted to affect policies—to think and work differently.

In college, I’d been passionate about environmental justice and worked with a student action group on local issues. This led me to pursue a Master of Public Health at UC Berkeley, focused on environmental health inequities. There, I began asking bigger questions: Why do these patterns of inequities exist—not just in one community, region, or state, but across the country? As I learned more about land use, CEQA [California Environmental Quality Act], and how planning decisions are made and who’s impacted by those decisions, the pieces started to come together.

I leapt into urban planning, through a year-long master’s program—it was like drinking from a firehose. Coming from a scientific and medical background, thinking about people, power, and place was very new to me. This was overwhelming, but incredibly eye-opening. That’s when I knew I wanted to work at the intersection of these issues to advance health and racial equity.

How does the ACH model reflect your approach to addressing root causes and systems change?

When I first asked myself why I wanted to work on these issues, I saw that injustices exist because systems are not taking into consideration the experiences of and outcomes for communities facing marginalization. 

That’s what draws me to the ACH model. It brings systems, governments, community organizations, and residents together as equal partners, moving people out of their silos and into a truly collaborative relationship with a shared vision. And that dynamic is really different—it significantly expands who gets heard, who influences decisions, and what gets prioritized. An ACH disrupts the “business as usual” ways in which much of society and traditional systems operate, where policy decisions are often made without input from those most affected. This is great if you’re in a position of influence, but if you’re not, you’ve probably experienced disparate outcomes. I see the ACH model as a remedy for that. It gives people a space to collaborate, think creatively, and problem-solve within their community context—to break down barriers and advance initiatives with shared understanding and in ways that truly make sense locally.

Your background includes working with local, state, and federal agencies. Based on your experience, how can ACHs support alignment across levels of government?

I think opportunities exist when different levels of government work together in coordination. When it’s working well—like when the CDC prioritized healthy community design—it led to federal funding, state-level grants, and real implementation at the local level. That kind of alignment can create real change. But that dynamic is in question now. With a dearth of federal leadership and the seeming dissolution of key federal agencies under the current administration—agencies that have played key roles in shaping the structural drivers of health—it’s uncertain how we’ll preserve or continue to build on the progress we’ve made in this direction.

In that context, the role of ACHs at the state and local level becomes even more critical. When state priorities point in a particular direction—through initiatives like CalAIM or other equity-focused efforts—ACHs can act as implementation structures, helping to carry those goals forward at the local level. If there are state laws or policies preventing an ACH site from advancing the strategies they consider critical, then that ACH can gather data and community insights to support legislative change at the state level. ACHs can also think outside the box to generate their own solutions locally. If there's a barrier, they can try to remove it directly—or find creative ways to achieve their goals by going around that barrier.

Ultimately, ACHs create space to think differently and break down silos to problem-solve within the context of their communities. There are multiple ways an ACH can overcome challenges and leverage opportunities when they arise.

Given ongoing shifts in federal policy, can you say more about what makes an ACH valuable?

With the vacuum we’re seeing in public health and equity-oriented leadership at the federal level, there's a real need and opportunity to lead at the state and local levels.

ACHs are spaces—laboratories for innovation. When you get diverse people together at the table of an ACH, working to address their own challenges, people come up with really great solutions. If I wanted to invest or build partnerships to help communities, I would be very interested in finding out: What solutions are ACHs coming up with? How are they collaborating? How are they responding to community needs and challenges right now?

The next four years are going to require us to think outside the box. How can we protect the things we’ve built and keep advancing on the issues that are important for health equity?  We have to do things in a different way. Fortunately, ACHs are also laboratories for democracy, structurally speaking—ready spaces for civic engagement and for advancing policy and systems change that needs to happen, especially when support for public health, community health, and equity-driven innovation are under threat.

Why is “centering community”—a core principle of the ACH model—so important to advancing health and equity?

I think community voice is essential. Although I’ve been in spaces where people have publicly stated, “You can advance equity without centering community voices in that process,” I disagree ardently. You have to have communities at the table—you need their perspectives and needs centered. Not just “community” writ large, but specifically the voices of groups and people who are being disproportionately impacted, who are facing real-time, real-world inequities and marginalization. If you're doing equity work in a true and authentic way, there’s no shortcut around that. That, for me, is really central—and I really value that in the ACH model.

The real risk when you don’t center community voice is that you’re just recreating the same dynamics and inequitable outcomes that society has already produced. Maybe you're calling it something else, but the outcomes are the same. You can undermine trust, create harm, and people assume the model isn’t working—when what’s really happening is that there’s no authentic focus on community voices. When this happens, people may become even more disheartened or distrustful because the systems continue to fail them. For an ACH, centering community voices is not a checkbox, and it’s not business as usual. It’s an approach that requires those in power to build their capacity, learn, and commit to doing things differently in order to equitably engage with communities.

What are you most looking forward to in your new role at CACHI?

I’m really looking forward to working with the ACH sites, getting to know them, and helping move their agendas forward. That’s really interesting to me. 

What drew me to CACHI overall is the opportunity to focus on California—this is my home state, and I care deeply about it. I'm excited to further the ACH model not just in one community, but across the CACHI network. That scope inspires me. I believe that when communities are structurally supported and working together effectively, they can create the solutions we need.