Our Mission and History

We are a capacity-building organization that provides trainings and tools to support health care providers and organizations.

CAPTC staff sitting around a table smiling during a meeting.

Our Vision

We envision an environment where health equity exists for all.

Our Mission

To build the capacity of health care professionals working in HIV, STIs, sexual and reproductive health, and emerging public health needs to deliver high-quality, respectful, and inclusive services.

Our Work

Since 1989, the California Prevention Training Center (CAPTC) has been delivering comprehensive technical assistance and training to clinicians and healthcare professionals through a diverse range of online and in-person. We specialize in empowering healthcare organizations to enhance their service delivery through tailored capacity-building initiatives. Our dedicated team drives a variety of programs focusing on sexual and reproductive health, disease intervention, family planning, and beyond, ensuring that our partners provide clients and the greater community with inclusive and comprehensive care.

Our Impact

CAPTC’s programs work from different angles to sustain long-term, meaningful progress in sexual health and public health. See our Impact Reports here. Here are three major themes of our impact:

Jen Jackson and Chris Garcia lead a training

Engaging Learner Experiences 

We help learners acquire critical knowledge and skills across all CAPTC courses and resources so that they can apply them with confidence in their own practice. We use our decades of expertise to train clinicians and healthcare workers on issues at the heart of sexual and public health. 

CAPTC staff at a gathering

Advancing Health Equity through Capacity Building

Through our programs centered on health equity, we build capacity through structural interventions, emphasizing ways of addressing systematic racism in sexual health settings, improve health for transgender people, and train disease intervention professionals.  

CAPTC Capacity Building Assistance staff meet with CDC

Meaningful Partnerships

As recognized experts in the field, we cultivate partnerships with those who work directly with communities most impacted by sexual health issues. Along with public health institutions, training centers, and health departments, we partner with CBOs, staff, and providers involved in various training topics.  

Our Philosophy

We use various strategies and tools—trainings, technical assistance, communication strategy, and more—to help organizations create sustainable, strong, and effective structures that support them in realizing their mission.

Our capacity-building services aim to promote human connection and transform healthcare. In that vein, we create learning environments for providers in which they feel safe to reflect on their own beliefs and broader social norms. We promote an ethic of compassion, empathy, and humility. We tackle the toughest public health challenges like implicit bias, medical mistrust, and racism.

While we have deep expertise, we know that you’re the expert in what your communities need. We’ll work beside you to create innovative solutions to the challenges you’re facing.

Our History

Originally funded in 1989 as a clinical STD training center, the CAPTC has grown in response to emerging public health needs. We now provide an array of capacity-building services including technical assistance, evaluation support, communication strategy, and more to healthcare professionals domestically and internationally.

We know that the environments in which people are born, live, learn, work, play, worship, and age greatly affect individuals’ health outcomes. For that reason, our approach considers the structural and individual factors that contribute to health inequities.

Over the years, we have cultivated deep partnerships with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the California Department of Public Health (CDPH), various nonprofits such as Heluna Health, and others, to comprehensively address the toughest sexual health issues of our time. It’s our privilege to support organizations like yours to promote radically inclusive and transformative sexual health care.