Cara Skillingstead

Cara Skillingstead is the Associate Director of Health Care Transformation at the Association of Asian Pacific Community Health Organizations. Skillingstead provides leadership, program development, and guidance for training and technical assistance, capacity building, partnership development, resource sharing, and network facilitation in support of community health centers, primary care associations, and community-based organizations. Skillingstead is committed to enhancing and advancing culturally-grounded and responsive care across health systems. She works with health system stakeholders to: uplift promising practices for addressing environmental impacts on health; identify community strengths and assets to respond to social, political, cultural, and environmental drivers of health; and advocate for changes to upstream policies that invisibilize and erase the unique lived and intersectional experiences of individual subgroups.

The Association of Asian Pacific Community Health Organizations is a membership organization made up of health centers and public health stakeholders to promote advocacy, collaboration, and leadership to improve the health of Asian Americans (AA), Native Hawaiians (NH), and Pacific Islanders (PI). AAPCHO was formed to create a national voice to advocate for the health needs of AA and NH/PI communities and the community health providers that serve their needs. AAPCHO is dedicated to promoting advocacy, collaboration, and leadership that improves the health status and access of AAs and NH/PIs within the United States and the U.S-Affiliated Pacific Islands, primarily through its member community health centers.