Social Health Integration
Community health infrastructure and integration of social health services into healthcare workflows.
Results-focused consulting for healthcare and homelessness
Moving from complexity to a common goal
Common Goal Consulting partners with nonprofits, health systems, government agencies, and community-based organizations to design and implement initiatives that measurably improve outcomes.
Best of
Change management, Quality Improvement, coaching
Partnering with
Health plans, nonprofits, community-based organizations, government agencies
For results
We solve complex problems with you—more people thriving, housed, supported
As featured in
- New York Times
- Wall Street Journal
- NPR
- Fast Company
- MacArthur Foundation
Our Mission
Architect breakthroughs in social health and homelessness, from design through implementation
Big problems tend to have something in common: Solving them requires bringing people together who don't usually work together—and getting them moving in the same direction. That's the transformative power of a common goal.
Founder & Principal Eddie Turner is a nationally recognized improvement leader whose work has been awarded by the MacArthur Foundation and covered in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and NPR. He is an IHI-certified coach and Improvement Advisor.
From strategy design through implementation, we've worked across the hardest arenas in social change—CalAIM waiver rollout and Medicaid innovation, homelessness, and community health clinics and organizations.
Housing & Homelessness
Coordinated Outreach improvement, cross-sector coordination.
Improvement Initiatives & Collaboratives
New approaches to outcomes-based cohorts, and rebooting initiatives to reach their full potential.
Multi-Stakeholder Alignment
Facilitating multi-agency partnerships, coalition decision-making, and aligning incentives.
Who We Serve
Built for mission-driven organizations
We work with nonprofits, your Continuum of Care, health departments, Federally Qualified Health Centers, community development organizations, and philanthropic foundations committed to systemic change.
- Nonprofits
- Continuums of Care
- Health Departments
- Federally Qualified Health Centers
- Community Development Orgs
- Philanthropic Foundations
Services
Consulting services for breakthrough results
We offer customized, expert-led engagements spanning strategy, implementation, training, and consulting.
With years of experience leading and troubleshooting Improvement Collaboratives, we understand how to design cohorts that achieve results. We also have the confidence and imagination to adapt the format to your coalition's unique needs. Let's fight "Collaborative burnout" and craft a fresh experience that inspires participants.
In city, state, and national efforts, we help organizations design programs with fidelity to evidence-based best practices while adapting to local context. We ♥ people. We take their needs seriously. From that starting point, we design programs for improvement and spread that are inspiring, ambitious, and realistic.
"When you unwrap the utopia, batteries aren't included." We love the complex work of implementation, bringing teams to embrace the vision and help carry it out. Even an effort that is mid-cycle can be improved and get results.
Your team deserves relatable QI training, using examples and scenarios from your workplace. We can create a fully customized Quality Improvement training around your needs and deliver it in a relational, memorable way. Let's move past theoretical frameworks and apply QI to real workflows.
We facilitate inclusive strategic planning processes that align your team, board, and community stakeholders around a shared vision. We have facilitation methods for navigating complex organizational dynamics and building consensus.
"Change happens at the speed of trust." Effective coaching is relational, curious, and drives focus on the goal. We have experience catalyzing results in a multi-national federated NGO, regional coalitions of homelessness system leaders, city health department teams, and even political organizers. As an IHI-trained Improvement Advisor, Eddie Turner brings advanced skills for data analysis, experimentation, and coaching from data to action.
Outcomes & Expertise
We chase outcomes—and solve problems that haven't been solved yet
Proof Points
Coaching counties to achieve "Functional Zero" homelessness—and a $100 million MacArthur Award
Using creative facilitation, Quality Improvement, data analysis, and coalition change management skills, I coached the Built for Zero counties that achieved "functional zero" veteran or chronic homelessness from 2017-2021. We created proof points from the Chicago suburbs to 'Big Country' Texas to one of the reddest counties in California. Excited by these results, the MacArthur Foundation awarded our team the $100 million 100&Change Award in 2021.
Facilitating Medicaid waiver implementation across California
California is a trailblazer in Medicaid innovation and waiver implementation. We designed and delivered implementation supports for CalAIM services across 29 counties. We stood up regional networks, trained community-based organizations to become Medicaid-billing providers, and tested methods for multi-sector coordination to integrate these waiver-funded services into the community fabric. Service utilization increased each quarter throughout the initiative, particularly in key populations.
Rebooting off-track initiatives
As an improver, I love helping projects meet their full potential. At Habitat for Humanity's international headquarters, I led the redesign and implementation of their peer-to-peer fundraising program that generated a 389% increase in total dollars raised, resulting in millions of additional dollars to low- and middle-income countries. At Community Solutions, when our methods plateaued, I embedded in homelessness service teams to craft new strategies, rapidly test changes, and engineer a win. A burst of 5 new counties achieving "functional zero" homelessness soon followed.
Creating playbooks to spur national breakthroughs
Working with homelessness leaders in Chattanooga, Nashville, Baltimore, and Bakersfield, we identified that routine case conferencing meetings could do more to drive housing placements. I led design, testing, and dissemination of a new set of multi-stakeholder coordination practices, complete with a simple measurement tool. The Action-Oriented Case Conferencing Toolkit spread to CoCs around the country, and users documented hockey-stick growth in housing placements. We moved from learning to action to results.
Business modeling and revenue growth
I am an expert facilitator of the Business Model Canvas and have used it to help organizations identify new lines of revenue and edit priorities according to the mission. I consulted with Habitat for Humanity national offices to process a new strategic plan and optimize lines of revenue. As a result, Habitat Guatemala—always among the most sophisticated in the Habitat network—garnered record levels of foreign funding. We saw similar results in Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, and Zambia.
Scrappy
Learning from the best (like the Obama campaign)
I am indebted to mentors and exemplars from throughout my career. Working for the Obama for America campaign in 2007-2008, I performed faith outreach to understand the needs of churchgoers who were curious about Obama but not ready to cast a vote. I co-authored house party toolkits to supply volunteers with reflection questions and supportive language that adapted the campaign's messages to their context. More than anything, I learned to be scrappy, obsess over data, and do whatever it takes every day to drive the next chunk of progress.
About
Motivated by love, justice, and loving to fix things
Bio
Proven impact across public health, housing, and global development
Eddie Turner started Common Goal to work nimbly with organizations and communities to solve their toughest problems.
At the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), Eddie served as Senior Director for Equity and Population Health, where he led the organization's California portfolio—overseeing complex initiatives in Medicaid innovation, community health clinics, and closing county-wide equity gaps. He also led IHI's project with the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, targeting interventions to extend life expectancy for key populations. His work helped health systems translate equity commitments into measurable operational change.
As Senior Strategy Lead at Community Solutions, Eddie led coaching and improvement programs that empowered 14 U.S. cities and counties to measurably end homelessness for key populations. This groundbreaking work earned the MacArthur Foundation's 100&Change grant, a $100 million award—and was featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, and the documentary The Way Home.
Earlier in his career, Eddie worked at Habitat for Humanity International, where he managed global revenue strategy and volunteer programs operations, achieving a 300%+ increase in funding directed to low- and middle-income countries.
Eddie holds a Master's degree from Yale University, where he studied social ethics and change movements, the intellectual foundation that shapes how he thinks about systemic transformation and the role of institutions in creating communities where people can thrive.
"Justice is what love looks like in public."
Contact
Let's talk about your goals
Get in Touch
Whether you're exploring a new program, seeking evaluation support, or just want to think out loud about a challenge, we'd love to hear from you.
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