Trust & Engagement Action Collaborative
Advancing trust and engagement with individuals, families, and communities on the goals that matter most for them.

About the Trust & Engagement Action Collaborative
As one of four action collaboratives under the National Academy of Medicine’s Leadership Consortium, the Trust & Engagement Action Collaborative (TEAC) identifies and advances evidence-based strategies to promote the trust and engagement necessary to understand and achieve personal health and health care goals. Building trust and facilitating meaningful engagement is essential to success in care that both improves outcomes and drives systems change. The TEAC therefore seeks to identify…
- The structures and conditions, both inside and outside the health care system, that impact health and health care decision-making.
- Best practices to build trust with and engage people served by systems that enable them to drive their own health goals.
- Innovative methods and metrics to measure trust and engagement to assess health outcomes and impact, and to encourage continuous learning.
Co-Chairs

Mary D. Naylor, PhD, FAAN, RN, is the Marian S. Ware Professor in Gerontology and Director of the NewCourtland Center for Transitions and Health at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. For more than two decades, Dr. Naylor has led a multidisciplinary team of clinical scholars and health services researchers in generating and disseminating research findings designed to enhance the care and outcomes of chronically ill older adults and their family caregivers. She is the architect of the Transitional Care Model, a care management approach proven in multiple NIH clinical trials and foundation sponsored translational efforts to improve older adults’ experience with care and health outcomes, while decreasing use of costly health services. Dr. Naylor is the 2016 recipient of AcademyHealth’s Distinguished Investigator Award, a recognition of significant and lasting contributions to the field of health services research. She was elected to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) in 2005. For eight years, she served as the national program director for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation sponsored Interdisciplinary Nursing Quality Research Initiative. She recently completed six-year terms as a commissioner on the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), board member of the National Quality Forum and member of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s National Advisory Council. Currently, Dr. Naylor is a member of the NAMs Leadership Consortium on Value & Science-Driven Health Care and co-chairs NAMs Care Culture and Decision-Making Innovation Collaborative. Dr. Naylor also is a member of the RAND Health Board of Advisors, the Institute for Health Improvement’s Scientific Advisory Group, and the Board of Trustees of the Dorothy Rider Pool Health Care Trust.

Sandra R. Hernández, MD is president and CEO of the California Health Care Foundation. Prior to joining CHCF, Sandra was CEO of The San Francisco Foundation, which she led for 16 years. She previously served as director of public health for the City and County of San Francisco. She also co-chaired San Francisco’s Universal Healthcare Council, which designed Healthy San Francisco, an innovative health access program for the uninsured.
Sandra is an assistant clinical professor at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine. She practiced at San Francisco General Hospital in the AIDS clinic from 1984 to 2016. She was appointed by Governor Jerry Brown to the Covered California board of directors in February 2018. She currently serves on the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing Advisory Council at UC Davis and the UC Regents Committee on Health Services. Sandra served on the External Advisory Committee at the Stanford Center for Population Health Sciences in 2016. Sandra is a graduate of Yale University, the Tufts School of Medicine, and the certificate program for senior executives in state and local government at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Collaborative Updates
Impact
The NAM Trust & Engagement Action Collaborative (TEAC) was established in 2013 to convene leaders from public, private, and independent stakeholder organizations across all U.S. health system sectors to collaborate on activities essential to the common good.
Action Collaborative Description
The growing awareness of the importance of designing a health and health care system based on the needs, priorities, and goals of individuals, families, and communities underscores the need for cross-sector collaboration. Such collaboration is essential to prioritize and deepen involvement and enhance efforts towards health system effectiveness, affordability, equity, and continuous learning. The NAM Trust & Engagement Action Collaborative (TEAC) was established in 2013 to convene leaders from public, private, and independent stakeholder organizations across all U.S. health system sectors to collaborate on activities essential to the common good. These projects include public discussions on key issues and corresponding actions to drive change, as well as informative reports that surface critical analytics and insights to support the launch of new capacities. Examples of the issues addressed in this action collaborative include incentives for meaningful engagement, the science of trust in health and medical decision-making, and metrics to measure the impact of engagement and trust.
This activity blends the expertise of professional organizations representing clinicians on the front lines of health care delivery, patient- and community-centered organizations, decision science practitioners, and government agencies actively involved in patient, family, and community health. These professional and citizen leaders work collaboratively with individuals from organizations actively engaged in public, and person-centered health efforts. The aim is for inclusive, seamless multi-organizational collaboration in which participation in individual projects is driven by interest, need, and practicality.
Stakeholders
The TEAC seeks to include a wide variety of stakeholder voices to promote and to advance achievement of the LHS Shared Commitments Trust Framework.
- AARP
- AcademyHealth
- Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
- American Academy of Nursing
- American Medical Association
- American Public Health Association
- America’s Essential Hospitals
- Association of American Medical Colleges
- Camden Coalition
- Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services
- Department of Health & Human Services
- Families USA
- Google Health
- Grantmakers in Health
- Health Leads
- Health Resources & Services Administration
- Kaiser Permanente Health Plans & Hospitals
- Maternal Mental Health Leadership Alliance
- Morehouse School of Medicine
- National Health Council
- National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities
- National Patient Advocacy Foundation
- National Partnership for Women &
- Families
- Nemours Children’s Health
- OCHIN
- Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute
- Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative
- Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
- The Commonwealth Fund
- The Urban Institute
- University of California, San Diego
- Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Activities
Projects completed, under way, or under consideration by the TEAC include:
- Assessing Meaningful Community Engagement in Health & Health Care: An initiative aimed at identifying concepts and metrics that can best assess the extent, process, and impact of community engagement.
- Community Health Needs Assessments: A report aimed at elevating and prioritizing emerging leading principles and practices in the conduct of community health needs assessments.
Recent Meetings
- Spring 2025 Meeting
- Fall 2025 Meeting
- July 18, 2024
- January 18, 2024
- July 18, 2023
- April 13, 2022
- August 18, 2021
- January 13, 2021
- July 7, 2020

Featured Activity
Assessing Meaningful Community Engagement
Guided by a committee of national and community leaders that reflect diverse backgrounds and perspectives, the Assessing Community Engagement project aims to provide community-engaged, effective, and evidence-based tools to those who want to measure engagement to ensure that it is meaningful and impactful, with a special emphasis on ensuring equity as a critical input and outcome.
Publications
Contact Information
Questions?
For more information, please contact [email protected].