Community Oriented Correctional Health Services (COCHS) is a non-profit organization that works to build partnerships between jails and community health care providers. Our goal is to establish medical homes for offenders in their communities. Our objectives include:
- Support changes in public policy and practice that promote access to health preventive and treatment services both in jail and in partner community institutions
- Ensure that local health care systems are in place to treat jail-involved populations
- Improve the ability of jails to connect offenders with health care
- Develop health care delivery systems that are financially viable and sustainable
On a national level, we convene policy discussions of major stakeholders in the health and health care of vulnerable populations that interact with the criminal justice system to determine how we can make the system work better for these populations. Many of these conversations focus on the challenges and opportunities created by Medicaid expansion under national health reform.
We also provide technical assistance to local jurisdictions that are working to:
- Change how people involved with the criminal justice system receive health care, particularly with regard to treatment for mental illness and addictions
- Improve their health care delivery systems to save costs and reduce recidivism
Connectivity between jails and community health care providers is our guiding principle. There are a variety of strategies for achieving connectivity, but the goal is always the same: to ensure that people involved with the criminal justice system can get the health care services they need, regardless of their criminal justice status and regardless of whether they are in jail or in the community.
COCHS has been supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the nation's largest philanthropy devoted exclusively to improving the health and health care of all Americans, as well as by the Public Welfare Foundation, the Jacob & Valeria Langeloth Foundation, the California Healthcare Foundation and the California Endowment.
