September 4, 2025
Contact: Erin Hemlin, APG Vice President of Communications
ehemlin@apg.org; Tel: 202-770-1901
WASHINGTON — The West Coast Health Alliance – a groundbreaking coalition newly launched by the governors of California, Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington – can be an important contributor to preserving science and evidence as the core principals behind public health recommendations, according to America’s Physician Groups. The coalition’s work could provide a useful counterweight to growing concerns that federal agencies’ science-based decision-making on public health is being compromised, and that alternative sources of evidence-based guidance are needed in such areas as vaccines and other preventive care services.
“The West Coast Health Alliance is to be thoroughly commended for its stated goal of prioritizing scientific integrity to enhance the health of the population and ensure the public’s trust,” said APG President and Chief Executive Officer Susan Dentzer. “As APG said in a recent statement, our member physician groups – which operate in 46 states and the District of Columbia – are committed to the principal that science-based preventive services are central to value-based health care. We will welcome the opportunity to work with the Alliance to advance scientifically rigorous vaccine and other public health guidance to the millions of Americans to whom our physician organizations provide care,” Dentzer said.
“At the same time, we can hardly be happy that the nation has come to this pass,” Dentzer added. “Viruses and other infectious agents don’t respect political boundaries or ideologies, and public health recommendations shouldn’t be held hostage to them, either. It will now be up to the nation as a whole to determine whether we can reassemble a credible federal structure to support public health, or devolve into a competing set of realities and pseudo-realities based on geography and ideology.”
About America’s Physician Groups
APG’s approximately 340 physician groups comprise 260,000 physicians and other clinicians providing care to nearly 90 million patients, including an estimated 1 in 4 Americans and 1 in 3 Medicare Advantage enrollees. APG’s motto, ‘Taking Responsibility for America’s Health,’ represents our members’ commitment to clinically integrated, coordinated, value-based health care in which physician groups are accountable for the costs and quality of patient care. Visit us at www.apg.org.
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