Join The National Association of Community Health Centers Virtual Live Audience and Livestream Event
Exploring the Power of Collaboration: Pathways to Transformative Rural Health Partnerships
Moderated Panel Discussion | Monday, June 22, 2026 | 2:00 PM ET
Learn from experienced leaders working together to make healthcare happen in and for their communities.
Rural hospital and health center leaders share how they’ve become stronger working together.
THEIR STORIES CAN HELP YOU FIND A SOLUTION
Join us for a conversation with leaders from rural hospital and health centers in three states, to learn how they have been collaborating overtime and how their partnerships have prepared them for challenges and opportunities.
Across rural America, an outstanding model of healthcare is happening — not because it is mandated, but because bold leaders decided to strategically tackle challenges together. The results of their collective collaborations offer insights into how they successfully partner and the impact they are making together.Â
Join NACHC, with Moderator, Michelle Rathman, a 30+ year rural health strategy and communications expert and host of The Rural Impact, for an exclusive panel conversation featuring experienced rural hospital and community health center leaders who forged transformative partnerships and are rewriting what is possible for rural health when powered by collaboration.
Conversations Driving Rural Health Forward
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The conversation begins with exploring three unique case studies across a total of six organizations that focus on four pivotal areas of collaboration:
Workforce
From shared recruiting and retention strategies to building a federally supported Teaching Health Center Residency Program — hear how organizations are solving the rural provider shortage one partnership at a time.
Clinical Excellence & Closing Access Gaps
Shared OB/GYN services. Co-located primary care. Coordinated care models that are cutting ED visits, hospital admissions, and 30-day readmissions. Here's what closing the gap looks like in practice.
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Community Engagement & Meeting Community Needs
From joint nonprofits funding transportation, heating fuel, and food assistance to nutrition prescription programs tackling food insecurity — these leaders expanded the lens on what healthcare organizations can do for their communities.
Rural Health Transformation
Hear from panelists as they discuss their priorities for Rural Health Transformation funding and insights into how proven, grassroots collaboration models position rural organizations to lead at the national.
Meet the leaders mastering local health transformation.
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These aren't just experts talking about rural health. They're the CEOs, executives, and operational leaders who cultivated relationships, built the partnerships — and who are here to share how they did it.
Michelle
Rathman
President & CEO and Host
Impact! Communications Inc. /
The Rural Impact Podcast
(IL)
Ken
Gordon
CEO
Coös County Family Health Services
(Berlin, NH)
Teresa Lacey, RN, BSN, CPHQ
CEO
Wayne Memorial Community Health Centers
(Honesdale, PA)
Michael Peterson, FACHE
President & CEO
Androscoggin Valley Hospital / North Country Healthcare (Berlin, NH)
James Pettinato, BSN, MHSA, CCRN-K
CEO
Wayne Memorial
Hospital
(Honesdale, PA)
Kurt Waldbillig
CEO
Coal Country Community Health Center (Beulah, ND) /Â Sakakawea Medical Center
(Hazen, ND)Â
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An Insightful Leader to Leader Conversation & Idea Generating Event
Join the Conversation. Reserve your space in the virtual classroom and connect with the panel or listen and learn watching the livestream! You'll take away a clear understanding of practical, strategic, and transformative rural health partnerships in action! Learn their what, the why, how they went from strategy to action, and key outcomes — drawn directly from case studies you can apply to your own collaboration goals and objectives. Who benefits from attending:
Hospital Executives (CEO, CFO, CNO, CIO, HR)
Clinical and Operational Leaders
Health Center (FQHC) Executives and Leadership Teams
C-suite and senior leadership across rural health organizations
Common Goals.
Shared Challenges.
Focused on the Future of Rural Health
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Rural Health is Facing Many Crossroads. Learn From Rural Health Leaders Who Are Paving Pathways to Solution and Community Driven Partnerships.
Why this event, why now? Rural health delivery is experiencing new challenges while also presented with new opportunities that prescribe collaborative models to improve systems and outcomes.
In 2025, NACHC set out to find examples of collaboration between health centers and hospitals serving rural communities.Â
The stories turned into case studies and action briefs shared by leaders from three states detail how they have been making transformation happen and how their efforts have prepared them for the present and what is yet to come.
In the White Mountains of New Hampshire. In rural North Dakota. In the Pocono region of Pennsylvania. Health center and hospital leaders lead not by competing but through collaborating — building residency programs, launching nonprofits to address non-medical needs, sharing medical and key departmental staff, and transforming what "rural healthcare" means for their teams, patients, and greater communities.
Three case studies. Three states.
One powerful lesson: collaboration changes everything.
New Hampshire
White Mountains Region
A Teaching Health Center Residency Program in development. A joint nonprofit that has donated over $120,000 to local communities. A free medical transport program that has provided nearly 4,400 rides. This is what shared mission looks like.
North Dakota
Mercer County
Two organizations that were once financially competing — now operating under one shared CEO and one shared mission. The result: 38 fewer inpatient admissions per 1,000, 141 fewer ED visits per 1,000, and a model featured by HRSA as a national example.
Pennsylvania
Wayne & Pike Counties
A food prescription program enrolled 436 participants, reduced A1C levels, and addressed food insecurity and transportation barriers head-on — proving that healthcare organizations can and should address the conditions that drive people to the ED in the first place.
Reserve Your Spot
Virtual Live Event For Rural Hospital & Healthcare Leaders
This event is complimentary to attend and open to rural health and healthcare leaders nationwide. Space is limited for the live experience.
Registrants receive a recording link and a downloadable copy of the case studies after the event.
Presented by
National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC) in partnership with Impact! Communications, Inc. & The Rural Impact Podcast & Publishing
