Intend Health Strategies
Activating relational potential that lies in the space between us all.
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
Healthcare is increasingly complex, requiring sophisticated skills that prioritize high levels of coordination, collaboration, and trust. Drives for efficiency, value, and equity only raise the stakes and heighten the need for truly effective teams. The characteristics of high-performing teams and organizations have been known for decades. Concepts like psychological safety, flattened hierarchy, managing tensions from difference, and fostering connection have been extensively researched and documented. However, building such teams, or transforming poorly performing teams into them, has eluded health systems leaders and practitioners for some time. We now live in a moment where the stakes are even higher, and our systems, leaders, and colleagues face additional obstacles — levels of burnout, already high pre-COVID, have soared during the pandemic, the workforce has shrunk, and tremendous harm has been done to trust between the healthcare workforce and their institutions and leaders.
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
Relational Leadership Institute
The Relational Leadership Institute (RLI) is an in-depth, multi-session learning and skill development program for healthcare professionals that is delivered at academic medical institutions. Participants engage in the program as an interprofessional, intergenerational cohort. Sessions are taught by members of the Intend Health National Team in concert with institutional leaders. The program helps people who are often isolated in their healthcare profession break down silos, connect across age and profession, and build a greater sense of community within their institution. RLI participants develop the skills to:
- Build relationships and community between their colleagues and patients
- Advocate for change in policies and systems
- Achieve true connection, common vision, and interdependent action to impact healthcare and health
RLI is currently run at three partner sites: Oregon Health and Science University, University of North Carolina, and the University of Utah.
Student Action Network
The next generation of health professionals has a critical role to play in transforming our healthcare system. That’s why we’re engaging them now.
Our national Student Action Network (SAN) comprises interprofessional, student-led teams from 15-20 institutions.
With support from coaches and faculty advisors, students design and implement community-based projects. They also develop their Relational Leadership skills through quarterly workshops, ongoing coaching sessions, and large-scale community events.
Students initiate a range of initiatives:
- Direct care: providing clinical services at community organizations
- Promoting interprofessional collaboration: integrated care team visits, mentorship programs, relationship-building events
- Health education: leading discussions on topics such as the opioid crisis, end-of-life issues, healthcare disparities
Leadership Pathway
Program alumni interested in going deeper into Relational Leadership principles can join the Leadership Pathway (LP). LP members participate in intensive courses, peer-to-peer learning, social events, and program delivery. The purpose of the pathway is twofold: it supports members to practice their leadership skills and deepen their learning, and it provides a pipeline of new facilitators, coaches, and trainers to support Intend Health’s programs. This model offers a way for us to build a national community and momentum for change, as well as sustainably grow our program offerings.
The Leadership Pathway experience is tailored to meet each individual’s experience and goals. Some program alumni return as facilitators at our annual Summit; others opt in to our Relational Coaching Course, which allows them to coach and support student teams. The Leadership Pathway serves between 50-70 members at any given time.
Relational Leadership Programs and Workshops
We partner with private clinics, community health centers, health systems, and academic institutions to bring Relational Leadership learning to practicing healthcare providers. The engagements are customized and can range from 10-week intensive cohorts, keynote speeches at conferences, or multi-session workshops.
Contact us to learn more about bringing Relational Leadership to your institution!
Where we work
External reviews

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Our results
How does this organization measure their results? It's a hard question but an important one.
Number of healthcare students and providers served by our programs
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
Number of participants across all Intend Health Strategies programs, including the Student Action Network, RLI, and the Leadership Pathway.
Number of health professions served
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
Intend Health brings together participants from multiple health disciplines, including medicine, nursing, physical therapy, social work/behavioral health, pharmacy, dental, and more.
Number of states with an Intend Health presence
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Our Sustainable Development Goals
Learn more about Sustainable Development Goals.
Goals & Strategy
Learn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
Intend Health Strategies empowers the healthcare community with the mindset and tools to connect in our relationships, knowing that the quality of our human interactions is the most important element in catalyzing positive change.
In the short term, it is our goal to help individuals build the mindset and tactical skills needed to create strong interpersonal connections and positive team dynamics. In the long term, we work to build leadership capacity and drive systems-level change by focusing on three fundamental things:
Provider wellbeing, specifically by supporting strong relationships that allow clinicians to be their full, human selves
Fostering strong connections across teams, across professions, and across the wider system
Supporting health professionals to have agency, voice, and power to help drive the systems-level change that healthcare needs
Our model, Relational Leadership, is a human-centered approach to working with others that cultivates connection and awareness in order to increase belonging, collaboration, equity, and impact across health systems. We teach skills that foster work cultures where all team members or stakeholders share a greater sense of psychological safety and feel seen, heard, and valued for their perspectives and contributions.
Our vision is to have a healthcare workforce that is connected, empowered, and thriving; who can provide excellent patient care and drive the positive transformation that our healthcare system so badly needs.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
Intend Health Strategies is creating a more effective, connected, and relational healthcare professionals. We believe that improving the quality of our human interactions is the most important element for catalyzing positive change — for individuals, for teams, and for the broader healthcare system.
Woven throughout our work is a commitment to engaging both students and practicing clinicians to create positive change now and in the future. Participants are from across generations and career stages, come from diverse backgrounds, and work in a range of clinical settings. Our programs are interprofessional, with participants representing over 15 health disciplines, including physicians, nurses, physical therapists, medical assistants, and more.
The learning experiences we offer are deep and transformational. We inspire healthcare clinicians and teams to be more intentional about the quality of their interactions with their peers, their team, and their patients. Our approach is also practical and actionable. We provide the roadmap and tools to ignite the relational spark so that individuals, teams, and communities can begin to connect and work more effectively together in service of better healthcare and better health.
Intend Health Strategies is committed to ongoing improvement of our programs and our organizational practices. We hold ourselves accountable in four key ways:
1. Relevance — The healthcare landscape is continually changing, the pain points clinicians encounter in practice are changing, and the national conversation around healthcare is changing. Intend Health keeps on the pulse of these ongoing changes, evolving our curriculum and content to meet the needs of the moment.
2. Reach — We seek to expand the reach of our programs, while maintaining a high-quality experience for participants. In growing our reach, we are intentional about increasing the diversity of participants, geographic locations, healthcare professions, and clinical settings.
3. Response — Based on the feedback we receive from participants, Intend Health Strategies is thoughtfully iterating and improving our programs. We are continually refining our materials to ensure participants find them meaningful, engaging, and useful.
4. Impact — We are committed to offering programs that change people’s knowledge, their behavior, and ultimately lead to improvements in performance, satisfaction, and outcomes.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
Intend Health Strategies’ senior leadership team includes Brian Souza, CEO; Jane Cooper-Driver, Chief Program Officer; and Kate Hansen-Roxas, Director of Operations. The Board of Directors comprises a diverse group of leaders, with deep experience in the healthcare and nonprofit sectors. Andrew Morris-Singer, MD, Founder and Board Chair, is an Internal Medicine physician as well as a thought leader and long-time champion of primary care.
All programs are delivered by a talented team of experienced trainers, composed of practicing healthcare professionals from across the country. Trainers reflect the diversity of background, profession, expertise, and clinical setting reflected in the greater Intend Health network. Programming is delivered through a blend of virtual learning and in-person sessions, which allows us to reach more participants at a broader range of clinics, institutions, and health systems. COVID prompted us to shift even more of our programming to virtual; decisions about the specific format of each program are made collaboratively with all partners involved.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
Growing out of a grassroots primary care revitalization effort launched at Harvard Medical School, Intend Health was founded as Primary Care Progress (PCP) in 2010. Since then, we have transformed from an alliance of medical school-based teams promoting primary care into a national movement — a powerful learning collaborative of current and future healthcare professionals from across disciplines and career stages.
Our work is grounded in Relational Leadership (RL), a human-centered approach to working with others that cultivates connection and awareness in order to increase belonging, collaboration, equity, and impact across health systems.
In 2017, Intend Health Strategies collaborated with Oregon Health and Science University to develop the Relational Leadership Institute (RLI). Participants progress through the semester-long program as an interprofessional and intergenerational cohort of up to 40 people. Building on success and popularity, RLI launched at two new institutions: University of North Carolina and the Relational Leadership Initiative at the University of Utah. These local RLI programs have been gaining traction and, based on evaluation findings, are having a significant positive impact on participants. As of 2019, a total of 221 interdisciplinary health professionals and trainees have participated in RLI.
As we began our second decade, in 2022 we changed our name to Intend Health Strategies. As ever, we are focused on the depth and quality of programming with our core partners:
How we listen
Seeking feedback from people served makes programs more responsive and effective. Here’s how this organization is listening.
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How is your organization collecting feedback from the people you serve?
Electronic surveys (by email, tablet, etc.), Focus groups or interviews (by phone or in person), Community meetings/Town halls, Suggestion box/email,
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How is your organization using feedback from the people you serve?
To identify and remedy poor client service experiences, To identify bright spots and enhance positive service experiences, To make fundamental changes to our programs and/or operations, To inform the development of new programs/projects, To identify where we are less inclusive or equitable across demographic groups, To strengthen relationships with the people we serve,
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With whom is the organization sharing feedback?
Our staff, Our board, Our community partners,
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Which of the following feedback practices does your organization routinely carry out?
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What challenges does the organization face when collecting feedback?
It is difficult to get the people we serve to respond to requests for feedback, We don’t have the right technology to collect and aggregate feedback efficiently, Staff find it hard to prioritize feedback collection and review due to lack of time, We don't (yet) have the right system to aggregate feedback across all our programs,
Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
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- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
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- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
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Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
Intend Health Strategies
Board of directorsas of 3/28/2022
Dr. Andrew Morris-Singer
Bryan Simmons
Arcus Foundation
Susan Kaufman
Susan L. Kaufman Consulting
Jonathan Sugarman
Global to Local
Andrew Morris-Singer
Primary Care Progress
Victoria Sale
Ready Responders
Marianne Roy
Roy Associates
Krisda Chaiyachati
Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania
Board leadership practices
GuideStar worked with BoardSource, the national leader in nonprofit board leadership and governance, to create this section.
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Board orientation and education
Does the board conduct a formal orientation for new board members and require all board members to sign a written agreement regarding their roles, responsibilities, and expectations? Yes -
CEO oversight
Has the board conducted a formal, written assessment of the chief executive within the past year ? No -
Ethics and transparency
Have the board and senior staff reviewed the conflict-of-interest policy and completed and signed disclosure statements in the past year? Yes -
Board composition
Does the board ensure an inclusive board member recruitment process that results in diversity of thought and leadership? Yes -
Board performance
Has the board conducted a formal, written self-assessment of its performance within the past three years? Yes
Organizational demographics
Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? GuideStar partnered on this section with CHANGE Philanthropy and Equity in the Center.
Leadership
The organization's leader identifies as:
The organization's co-leader identifies as:
No data
Race & ethnicity
Gender identity
Sexual orientation
Disability
We do not display disability information for organizations with fewer than 15 staff.