Charles Robbins
Principal
HMA Community Strategies
[email protected]
https://www.linkedin.com/in/robbinscharles/
For three decades Charles Robbins held executive leadership positions with national and local nonprofit organizations providing behavioral health, housing, and social service programming. With more than 30 years of recovery from stimulant use and alcohol, Mr. Robbins possesses extensive knowledge of substance use disorder (SUD) evidence-based prevention and treatment programs.
His recent projects include conducting an evaluation of the Los Angeles County strategies to expand and enhance interim/bridge housing and emergency shelter services. He conducted an evaluation of the City of Los Angeles FamilySource System designed to prevent homelessness and lift families out of poverty. Mr. Robbins has been involved in three multi-county State Opioid Response (SOR) grants focused on the expansion of medications for addiction treatment (MAT) in California. He was the project manager for HMA’s Perinatal MAT Expansion grant. He is a mentor for HMA’s Transitions of Care project and a coach for the JailMAT/Child Welfare learning collaborative.
Mr. Robbins joined HMA from a federally qualified health center in Los Angeles providing healthcare and social services to the HIV, LGBTQ, and low-income populations. He oversaw all fund development, public and government relations, community strategies, and coalition building. The organization received Housing Opportunities for People Living with AIDS (HOPWA) funding for housing services.
Prior he served as vice president at a behavioral health and child welfare agency in Los Angeles. Mr. Robbins was instrumental in expanding programs to include homeless transition age youth (TAY) drop-in services, crisis shelter, and bridge housing. Under his leadership, the agency opened a TAY drop-in center securing leased space at a federally qualified health clinic. He was successful in obtaining federal funding from the Administration of Children and Families (ACF) for a homeless youth street outreach program. He successfully obtained a contract with Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) to open crisis shelter and bridge housing programs. Charles’ early career work included executive leadership positions at The Trevor Project, the National LGBT Task Force, GLAAD, and the founding of Project Angel Heart, a home delivered meal program in Denver.
Mr. Robbins is skilled at organizational development, program implementation, community engagement, and how to improve coordination of services for vulnerable populations. He understands the complexities of working with vulnerable/at-risk populations as well as the challenges of limited resources. He is skilled in supporting the effective implementation of evidence-based programs and cross-sector collaboration to create healthy neighborhoods and communities. He is passionate about culturally responsive and patient-centered care and improving public sector systems to address the social determinants of health and health equity.
Charles serves as a Los Angeles County Commissioner for the Inter-Agency Council on Child Abuse and Neglect (ICAN) and he understands the importance of system integration to achieve better health outcomes. He also serves as a board member of an LGBT community center and was the past co-chair of a homeless youth coalition in Los Angeles.
Charles holds an MBA in healthcare management from Western Governors University and a certificate in nonprofit administration from the University of Colorado, Denver.
Specializations:
Homelessness, Housing, Child Welfare, Healthcare, Substance Use Disorder, Harm Reduction, Mental Health, Probation, Suicide Prevention, HIV Prevention, LGBT Population
Implementation and evaluation of multi-sector collective action framework, stakeholder engagement, focus group facilitation, conducting key stakeholder interviews, designing and deploying surveys, and data collection
Links to HPRI Research