Congratulations, Ellen Wu, on a great run!

We at Health Access salute Ellen Wu, executive director of the California Pan-Ethnic Health Network (CPEHN), as she announces she’s moving on next month, going on to lead the great group Urban Habitat.

CPEHN has been our close ally, a key Health Access member, a important leader on our board in the health advocacy community, in the fight for quality, affordable health care for all. Ellen has led CPEHN for the last 12½ years–the full time that I have been at Health Access, where we have have several joint projects and been allies in key campaigns. It’s been a great partnership, and a great run for her and the organization.Ellenwu

Under Ellen’s leadership, CPEHN co-sponsored the first (and still only) legislation in the country requiring private health plans to provide interpreters and translated documents, and we were proud to work on that with them, and at the Department of Managed Health Care in both the implementation of that law and the rest of the HMO Patient’s Bill of Rights. CPEHN’s actions have ensured that California’s communities of color were represented in all the conversations around state health reform, in the run-up to the Affordable Care Act, and in the work of implementation. We have appreciated CPEHN’s breadth, working on not just language access and cultural competency, but consumer rights in general, and also being a leader in the work advancing prevention and wellness.

We look forward to continue working with CPEHN, their staff, their board of directors.  But we’ll miss Ellen, and wish her the best in her new role.