PEOPLEFIRST
Watercolor illustration of the Denver skyline with the Front Range mountains beyond, foreground rolling hills with a cyclist on a path. Painterly tones — sage greens, ambers, slate blues. Used by Kevin in the full-width-image-banner section as a magazine-cover-scale lead image. (Note: Kevin's Figma layer name is 'Coalition members in collaborative discussion' — that's a layer-name artifact; the actual content is this watercolor landscape.)

About Us

An alliance built for the work.

An alliance built for the work that needs someone whose first allegiance is to the person seeking help.

What We Stand For

Putting people first — placing the interests of the people of Colorado ahead of our individual organizations' needs.

Working with member organizations who don't fully agree is harder than working with members who do. That's the point. When a payer, a provider, and an advocate disagree in the same room — and don't walk away — the position that emerges has been pressure-tested by the people who'd otherwise be arguing in opposite directions. The alliance trades the speed of consensus among the like-minded for the durability of consensus across the whole system.

See the policy work
It's uncomfortable in the best way. A payer, a provider, and an advocate disagreeing in the same room — and not walking away. Trust gets built somewhere in that friction, and the policy that comes out the other side is more honest because of it.
Colorado Access

All 4

system roles at one table — provider, payer, advocate, network administrator

Statewide

regional reach across Front Range, Mountain, Western Slope, and Eastern Plains

Culturally-specific

Spanish-language and lived-experience perspective built into the membership, not bolted on

The Coalition

Cross-sector by design.

Each member organization brings a distinct vantage point on Colorado behavioral health. Cards link to each org's site.

Provider

AllHealth Network — icon mark ingested from allhealthnetwork.org. Community provider.

AllHealth Network

Community mental-health center serving Arapahoe and Douglas counties — outpatient, crisis, residential, and integrated primary-care behavioral health services.

Serves: Front Range

Visit website

Provider

Paragon Behavioral Health Connections — icon mark ingested from paragonbhc.org. Provider cooperative; co-founder Camille Harding.

Paragon Behavioral Health Connections

A statewide cooperative of community behavioral health providers — joint contracting, shared infrastructure, and unified policy voice for Colorado's safety-net system.

Serves: Statewide · Front Range · Mountain · Eastern Plains

Visit website

Provider

Vail Health — icon mark ingested from vailhealth.org (small 32×32 favicon — replace with a higher-res mark when available). Provider; Eagle Valley + mountain communities.

Vail Health

Mountain-community health system serving Eagle, Pitkin, Garfield, and Lake counties — behavioral-health services integrated with primary and acute care, with statewide policy reach.

Serves: Eagle Valley · Mountain Communities

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Culturally-Specific Provider

Servicios de la Raza — icon mark ingested from serviciosdelaraza.org. FQHC; culturally-specific service to Spanish-speaking populations.

Servicios de la Raza

Federally Qualified Health Center providing culturally and linguistically grounded behavioral health, primary care, and social services to Latino and Spanish-speaking communities across Denver and the Front Range.

Serves: Front Range

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Payer / RAE

Colorado Access — heart icon mark ingested from coaccess.com (SVG). Payer / Regional Accountable Entity; Medicaid managed care.

Colorado Access

Colorado-based nonprofit health plan and Regional Accountable Entity — managing Medicaid behavioral health benefits for hundreds of thousands of Coloradans across Denver-metro and surrounding regions.

Serves: Front Range · Mountain

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Network Administrator

Signal Behavioral Health Network — icon mark ingested from signalbhn.org. ASO/BHASO; co-founder Daniel Darting.

Signal Behavioral Health Network

Behavioral Health Administrative Services Organization for a large region of Colorado — coordinating crisis services, care navigation, and provider networks across rural and urban communities.

Serves: Front Range · Eastern Plains · Mountain · Western Slope

Visit website

Advocacy

Innovela Consulting Group — wordmark ingested from innovelaconsulting.com (180×127 JPG, non-square — replace with a clean square icon when available). Behavioral-health consulting firm; Nancy VanDeMark's practice.

Innovela Consulting Group

Behavioral-health consulting practice led by Nancy VanDeMark — policy advisory, system-design, and lived-experience-grounded leadership on Colorado mental and behavioral health.

Serves: Statewide

Visit website

Advocacy

Mental Health Colorado — icon mark ingested from mentalhealthcolorado.org (SVG). Statewide advocacy organization.

Mental Health Colorado

Statewide advocacy organization for mental and behavioral health policy in Colorado — advancing equitable access, parity, and lived-experience leadership across the system.

Serves: Statewide

Visit website

How We Work

Four operating principles.

·01

Person first

We put the interests of the people of Colorado ahead of our individual organizations' needs — a tenacious focus on identifying and eliminating barriers to doing the right thing for people.

·02

Cross-sector

Members are willing to collaborate across sectors and viewpoints. The work emerges from disagreement that doesn't walk away — providers, payers, advocates, and administrators at the same table.

·03

Systems-level

Members operate with a systems-level perspective and bring constructive engagement with state and local government. Position work addresses the structural layer, not the program level.

·04

Durable across cycles

We work on reforms that extend beyond single budget years, election cycles, or administrations. Continuity is part of the structure.

Membership

What it actually means to be a member.

Membership in the alliance is by invitation, vetted, and approved by the Board. Member organizations bring their distinct perspective, their data, their political capital, and their willingness to compromise on org-level interests when the system needs it. In exchange, member organizations get a coalition voice that no single sector could speak with alone, and a forum where the work gets pressure-tested before it goes to the state.

How It Works

An invitation, not an application.

There is no application form. Membership begins as a conversation — about the alignment between an organization's work and the alliance's, about what each side would bring, and about whether there's a fit. Recruitment is relationship-based and runs through the Board; if there's alignment, an invitation follows.

Start a conversation

Stay Informed

An occasional briefing, by email.

Updates on coalition policy work, what's moving in Colorado behavioral health, and what we're paying attention to. No more than once a month.

We'll only use your email to send you the briefing. Unsubscribe any time.