November 6, 2025

New CCHE Evaluation Report: Advancing Readiness for an Aging Population (ARAP) Learning Community

image.jpgBackground on ARAP program: California’s population of older adults is growing at a record pace, presenting both opportunities and challenges for safety net primary care. To better understand how to support community health centers in serving this population, the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF) piloted the Advancing Readiness for an Aging Population (ARAP) Learning Community. Over 18 months, seven health centers across California participated in this program, which offered several supports to help strengthen capacity for serving older adults. This included funding, education, coaching, and peer sharing related to conducting a needs assessment and implementing a practice change project focused on older adult care.

CCHE’s evaluation findings showed that the ARAP Learning Community benefited both participating health centers and CHCF. The program successfully advanced seven health centers’ readiness to serve older adult populations (see box).

ARAP Learning Community outcomes for 7 participating health centers

(1) Increased knowledge and understanding of key care delivery and financial concepts related to older adult care

 (2) Application of new learnings to seven diverse and unique practice changes within their health centers to better serve older adults (3) Strengthened internal capacity and intention to focus on advancing care for older adult populations

 

CCHE employed a strategic learning evaluation design to support program improvement in real-time and increase CHCF’s understanding of how to support the field to accelerate readiness for serving older adult populations. The ARAP Learning Community effectively developed, tested, and refined the learning community approach, curriculum, and structure. Key facilitators to high health center engagement and program success included content and didacts from experts, peer sharing, focusing on applied learning, program team oversight and support, individualized coaching to health centers, and grant funding.

Looking ahead: The ARAP Learning Community also offered valuable lessons for future efforts to strengthen the field. The evaluation underscores that long-term support—such as policy alignment, continued funding, and broad dissemination of learnings—will be critical to ensuring safety net providers can meet the needs of California’s growing older adult population.

Read more about the evaluation here:
ARAP Final Eval Report Exec Summary-cover.jpg
Advancing Readiness for an Aging Population
Learning Community Evaluation Report

 

For more information, contact: Lisa.M.Schafer@kp.org

Subscribe to our newsletter