Hi there Reader,

Welcome to the Community Threads newsletter, I’m excited to have you aboard!

One of my favorite parts of my work with community coalitions and collaboratives is working with them to meet the community where they are.

As a recovering academic, let me tell you why communities don’t trust academics and researchers - even when academics are trying to get community input, the typical model is that they bring folks together in a new space where the researcher has all the power and then ask community members to answer a bunch of questions to serve their own research needs and then the community never hears from them again.

Harsh, right?

I’m not trying to throw academics under the bus, I used to be right there with them, and their hearts are often in the right place. But we’re generally not trained in academia to share power with community members and meet them where they are.

You know who does that well? Community coalitions and collaboratives!

Working hand in hand with these groups over the last several years, here are some of my favorite strategies we’ve employed to meet community members where they are:

• Listen where community is already gathering. I’m part of a coalition where I live in Fairfax, Virginia, and last year, we launched our very first community-wide event called Healthy Together Fairfax. We knew we wanted this to be an event by the community, for the community, so we started by…listening. Just listening. Sounds simple, but it’s a step many skip! We knew there were dozens of community groups already gathering regularly to talk about health, so we simply reached out to them, attended meetings, and listened. We took notes, drew out key themes from what we were hearing, and let those themes drive the planning process.
• Focus the conversation through Focus Groups in a Box. In the first phase of my work with the Allegheny County Infant Health Equity Coalition, our top priority was crafting a community-driven action plan. The Coalition awarded small research grants to community partners that were already gathering places for community members, so that they could lead their own focus groups. I helped develop a standard focus group guide and reporting template that was then shared with these partners, and they shared back insights gathered through the conversations they led to inform the development of the plan. This is an approach that checked a bunch of boxes: we put the power in the hands of community members (they led the groups and were compensated for their time), we met community members where they already were, we heard from dozens of additional marginalized community members that we wouldn’t have reached otherwise, and we got meaningful feedback that could be incorporated directly into the plan. So many wins.
• Widen your reach with Street Stalls. There’s a problem with the two approaches I just shared - there’s a certain type of community member that’s already part of existing groups and community organizations. There’s another type - actually many types - of community members that aren’t part of those groups. And sometimes - scratch that, most of the time - those are the folks we most need to hear from. Knocking door to door isn’t typically an option, but what we can do is gather community input on-site at community locations and events (think community centers, recreation centers, festivals, farmer’s markets). We used this approach last year to gather input to inform the Children’s Behavioral Health Blueprint led by Healthy Minds Fairfax. I designed and set up a tri-fold poster board (don’t underestimate the low-tech options!) with various categories of resources and had teens/children use green dots and caregivers/parents use pink dots to vote on the community resources they find most helpful. Another section the board had an open-ended question about what they’d most like to add/change in their community to support children’s mental health, with blank post-it-notes and markers available for passers-by to add their responses. End result: we got helpful input from a wider range of community members and not just those that would self-select into completing a survey or participating in a focus group.

These strategies are great to meet community where they literally, physically are and hear what they have to say. But there is a difference between hearing and truly listening - more on that next time!

Until then,

Vinu

PS Learn something in this newsletter? Spread the word! Forward this email to a friend or colleague who might want to weave their own community threads.

PPS Want to learn more about PoP Health and how we partner with community coalitions and collaboratives to transform health in communities through policy and systems change? Check out our website!

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