New CCH deputy director

Colleagues:

It is my pleasure to announce that Rachael Birch has joined the senior leadership team at Contra Costa Health as a deputy director.

Rachael has spent nearly 18 years in Public Health, including the past three as chief operating officer. Her experience with budget management and cross-division collaboration will be key to continuing our work, aligning services and improving continuity of care across CCH.

She joins Lavonna Martin and Matt Kaufmann as my deputies, filling the vacancy created when Erika Jenssen retired last month.

Rachael’s past successes include serving as project director for our Health Care for the Homeless (HCH) program and administrator for the Whole Person Care program. She has played important roles in the expansion of HCH and our school-based health centers, opioid response and COVID emergency response.

More recently, she served on the transformation team that has helped to advise our current improvement work. With her promotion, I would like to share an updated CCH organizational chart that shows how we are developing the department’s structure.

The deputies manage centralized administrative and business support functions shared by all of CCH, ensuring that all operational areas can take advantage of the size and depth of CCH when it comes to personnel, IT, capital planning, project management, compliance and quality.

We have several open leadership positions on our chart, and we are actively working to fill them. I will keep you informed as we progress.

Thank you all,

Ori Tzvieli, MD MS
Chief Executive Officer and Health Director (Interim)
Health Officer, Contra Costa County