For 15 years, the Coalition to Transform Advanced Care (C-TAC) has worked to ensure that people facing serious illness receive the care they need when and where they need it.
What began as a bold vision has become a national movement uniting policymakers, providers, advocates, and community leaders around a shared commitment to transforming care for individuals and families navigating serious illness.
Looking Back: Milestones That Shaped a Movement
C-TAC’s journey over the past 15 years has been nothing short of transformative, a story of vision, collaboration, and unwavering dedication to the people and families who inspire this work. From the start, C-TAC believed in the power of partnership to change lives, and together, that belief has delivered real progress.
In its earliest days, C-TAC helped bring serious illness care into the national spotlight, turning awareness into advocacy and ideas into action. Through early convenings and cross-sector collaborations, C-TAC helped build consensus around person-centered, goal-directed care and gave voice to communities often left out of the policy conversation. This foundational effort reshaped the national dialogue on palliative care and advance care planning and marked a turning point for how care is understood across the health system.
As the coalition grew, C-TAC became a trusted leader and catalyst for change. Working side by side with Congressional champions, federal agencies, and state partners, it helped and continues to advance legislation, regulatory reforms, and care models designed to align care with individuals’ needs and values. These accomplishments expanded access to person-centered care and redefined what quality and compassion look like in practice.
Over the years, C-TAC has deepened its impact by:
- Elevating the patient and caregiver voice, ensuring lived experiences drive every conversation and decision.
- Fostering innovation through CMMI care models and other value-based approaches, helping pioneer tools and frameworks that deliver better coordination, communication, and outcomes.
- Advancing supportive cancer care and serious illness priorities across sectors, partnering with health systems, oncology associations, and advocates to make comprehensive care the norm.
- Driving state-level progress, helping expand palliative care benefits and integrate supportive services into Medicaid and managed care programs nationwide.
In recent years, C-TAC has strengthened its role as a convener bringing together leaders from across the health care landscape to co-design real solutions for complex needs. From national policy forums to regional summits, C-TAC’s gatherings have become engines of collaboration, accelerating ideas and amplifying impact.
Each milestone is proof that when vision meets collective action, transformation is truly possible. Together, these achievements represent not just progress but a movement propelled by hope, compassion, and the unwavering belief that every person deserves care rooted in dignity and respect.
This Moment: A Year of Opportunity and Acceleration
As C-TAC marks this milestone year, the momentum for change has never been stronger. Across the country, leaders and communities are embracing a new reality: that our health care system must do more to support people with complex needs and that transformation is both possible and urgent.
The energy of this moment reflects 15 years of groundwork and partnership. It also signals a future ripe with opportunity to align policy, payment, and practice in ways that truly meet people where they are.
In 2026, C-TAC is focused on advancing key priorities that extend this legacy and ignite the next wave of progress:
- Expanding CMMI care models to better serve individuals with serious illness, harnessing lessons from innovation to scale access and impact.
- Strengthening support for family caregivers, recognizing their essential role in healing and sustaining those they love.
- Making supportive cancer care a national standard, ensuring equitable access to comprehensive care across the patient journey, from diagnosis to survivorship.
- Helped shape and elevate kidney care transformation, contributing to national conversations around value-based kidney care models like Kidney Care Choices (KCC), which are improving care coordination, expanding access to home-based care, and increasing pathways to transplantation
At the same time, C-TAC is asking bold, forward-looking questions to guide its next chapter:
- How can we reach and engage more people and partners?
- Which emerging opportunities can accelerate progress and deepen impact?
- How do we ensure our work continues to drive meaningful, lasting change?
These questions are both a reflection and a call for collaboration and creativity as C-TAC and its partners shape the future of serious illness care together.
Looking Forward: The Next 15 Years of Impact
Looking ahead, C-TAC is building on the strength of its history and the energy of this moment to chart the course forward. The next chapter is about scale, connection, and impact, and as always, about turning bold ideas into national realities.
The coalition’s vision for the next 15 years is clear and anchored in purpose:
- Scale policy solutions nationwide to ensure universal access to person-centered, goal-directed care.
- Advance integrated care models that support the whole person and address physical, emotional, social, and spiritual needs.
- Leverage data, research, and innovation to drive smarter policies, better outcomes, and lasting system transformation.
- Mobilize a broader coalition of stakeholders, building new partnerships across sectors to unify efforts and accelerate progress.
- Keep patients and families at the heart of every initiative, ensuring their experiences guide what’s next.
The goal is simple but urgent: to make supportive, coordinated care not the exception but the expectation for everyone facing serious illness.
A Collective Commitment
This anniversary is not just a reflection of progress but a celebration of people, purpose, and partnership. Every milestone achieved, every policy advanced, and every conversation sparked has been made possible by the dedication of C-TAC’s members, partners, and champions.
From early awareness building to national impact, from policy innovation to cultural change, C-TAC’s work is living proof that collective action drives transformation. The coalition’s community has built momentum that continues to grow stronger, opening new doors, inspiring new champions, and uplifting those whose voices have shaped this movement from the beginning.
All are welcome in this work.
Whether you are shaping policy, delivering care, advancing research, or bringing lived experience, your voice matters. It is this diversity of perspectives that fuels innovation, strengthens solutions, and ensures that care truly reflects the needs of the people it serves.
As we look ahead, the same spirit of collaboration will guide the path forward, and we invite you to join us. Together, we will continue to build a system that delivers better care, better outcomes, and a better experience for every person and family facing serious illness.
