Find your low-lift solutions

Growing up, were you, like me, always told to work hard?

It’s advice I’ve come to question over the years.

Don’t get me wrong, I still have deep respect for a strong work ethic. I just wonder if we’ve gotten overly obsessed with the idea of working hard instead of working strategically, smartly, efficiently. Which sometimes means the work is actually…easier. Faster. More fun.

Let me give you an example, courtesy of our school PTA.

Last week, as I was running into my daughter’s school to drop off her picture day order form (which I forgot to put in her backpack that morning, oops!), I saw a flyer for movie night at the school that very night. I had totally forgotten about it, but once reminded, quickly scanned the QR code and got tickets.

The PTA holds these on a few weeknights during the school year, and we’ve been trying to go whenever we can. When you buy tickets, you get to vote for one of the three options (my daughters LOVE this opportunity to chime in with their preference), and the one with the most votes gets screened. Tickets are $2 to see the movie, $7 if you also want a slice of pizza, snacks, and drink. Proceeds go to support the school. They screen the movie on the projector or wall in the school gym or cafeteria and everyone brings blankets/fold up chairs/pillows to throw on the floor.

The kids love the chance to see their friends, see a movie, and eat pizza. As parents, we love the chance to see other parents, observe the dynamics our kids have with their friends, and just have an easy, close-to-home, fun family activity. For the PTA, these events help raise funds but require relatively little effort or cost - the school is there, the gym/cafeteria/parking lot are empty in the evening, there’s already a projector and sound system ready to go.

Win-win-win.

And no one - not the kids, not the families, not the PTA - has to work hard.

I think these kinds of low-lift solutions are magical.

The reality is that the best way to get more participation is to make things easier for everyone involved. This isn’t always possible - but when it is…pure magic.

Community members are more likely to show up if it’s easy for them. Coalition members or local organizations are more likely to keep organizing or running an activity or program if it doesn’t require too much of them and the impact feels more than worth the little bit of effort required.

So take a look around - are there low-lift opportunities for community connection or action that your coalition can put into place? Drop me a note and share your low-lift examples, whether you’ve already done them/experienced them or are planning them for the future!

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Jane Fonda on how "community means power"

As agencies, nonprofits, families, and individuals make contingency plans upon contingency plans in face of all the uncertainty of this moment, I wanted to share some words - courtesy of Jane Fonda - of both hope and action (which were PoP Health’s wish + invitation for 2025…which, two months in, feels like it has already lasted about two years).

I’m not really up on pop culture or Hollywood, but I’ve been deeply impressed with Jane Fonda ever since I heard a podcast interview with her a couple years ago - what a life, what energy, and what commitment. In an industry where it is especially easy to ignore, pay lip service to, or throw a few pennies at societal problems, she’s been on the ground trying to fight for change.

So, I didn’t hesitate to click on the video of her speech at the SAG awards a week ago, where she received the Life Achievement Award (transcript here for the readers out there). And I’m so glad I did.

Here are my key takeaways:

• “Community means power.” - She talked about how unions have our backs and give us power, and I’d add to that all the other ways of coming together in sustained, structured ways - community coalitions, co-ops, neighborhood associations and groups. Create them, join them, sustain them.

• “Empathy is not weak or woke.” - This statement stands by itself, but Fonda had more to say about empathy. First, she connected it to the job of actors - “...we don't manufacture anything tangible. What we create is empathy.” Indeed, I’m a big believer in storytelling and its importance in creating empathy as well as inspiring and persuading. Which brings us to Fonda’s next point about empathy - “And even if they’re of a different political persuasion, we need to call upon our empathy and not judge, but listen from our hearts and welcome them into our tent, because we are going to need a big tent to resist successfully what’s coming at us.” I could not agree more. To sneak in some words from Rebecca Solnit, who I’ve been turning to often over the last couple months, “You need to pitch a big tent and welcome everyone who might come in, even if they came over recently and weren't always there. No one knows what it is going to take to overcome the current crisis…I do know that it's going to take a lot. The more the better.” As Solnit goes on to point out, “unwelcoming committees from people more interested in being right than effective” are self-destructive to the causes we support.

• “We are in our documentary moments. This is it. And it’s not a rehearsal.” - Fonda urged us to take this seriously, be brave, stay in community, and take action. And it’s not enough to just be against things. Fonda underscored, “We must find ways to project an inspiring vision of the future. One that is beckoning, welcoming, that will help people believe.”

As Fonda went on to say, “Let’s make it so,” Reader.

In your coalitions and your work, how are you projecting an inspiring vision of the future, widening your tent, staying empathetic, and building community power? Drop me a note and let me know. And let me know if you disagree about what we need right now too - disagreements are always welcome here.

And, for those looking for more concrete advice on how your coalitions, organizations, and agencies can take action in your communities to transform health - a quick save the date: April 2nd, noon ET, on Zoom, join PoP Health for a free action planning webinar. You'll learn about the #1 missing ingredient that's preventing your action plan from getting the results you want + details on how to follow our 5-step action planning process to go from feeling stuck to feeling like a superhero. Register here!

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A New Year's wish + invitation

Thank you for being a part of our Community Threads family! Having this space to share with you all and reading your emails about what you’ve gleaned from these newsletters have meant the world to me this past year.

So as we close the chapter on 2024 and enter 2025, I wanted to share with you a new year’s wish + invitation:

We recognize 2025 is a new year with significant challenges - some old, some new. And we believe wholeheartedly that it is at the intersection of hope and action that we can work together to transform health in our communities.

In that spirit, here at PoP Health, we’ll be launching two new projects in 2025 - action planning workshops and technical assistance packages for community health coalitions + an initiative focused on putting political and economic power back in the hands of communities.

We’ll share with you along the way right here in our Community Threads newsletters. Please keep those replies coming - I love hearing from you!

In the meantime, as we find new ways to take action together, I remain ever grateful to you - thank you for reading.

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The difference between cynicism and skepticism

Are you a pessimist or an optimist?

I’m optimistic (almost to a fault, my family would tell you).

But…I’m also pretty skeptical. Whether it’s someone trying to sell me on a business idea or life insurance package or supplements or pretty much anything - they’ll be met with a lot of questions and not-particularly-well-hidden skepticism (I’ve got no poker face, y’all - something I share with my daughter).

Doesn’t it seem somewhat counterintuitive to be both optimistic and skeptical? If you’re optimistic and believe the best in people, shouldn’t you also believe in the ideas people are putting forward? 

Well, in an issue of Well from the New York Times last month, they quoted the director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab, Jamil Zaki, making a distinction between cynicism and skepticism, and it was a real “light bulb moment” for me - 

“Cynicism…is a lack of faith in people, while skepticism is a lack of faith in our assumptions.” 

Ding, ding, ding! When I read this, I immediately thought, YES, this is exactly it. I believe in people (ok, not every single person, but generally speaking, I believe most people have good intentions and are trying their best). But I reject many of the assumptions that underlie our society. 

Dr. Zaki suggests that a cynical worldview - believing people are “generally selfish, greedy and dishonest” - can make you feel safer and smarter, but can also have a negative impact on your health and lead to beliefs that are untrue. He “encourages readers to become “hopeful skeptics” who think critically about societal problems while recognizing how kind and generous others really are.” 

And this, I think, is at the heart of public health and the work of coalitions in pursuit of transformational change to the health and well-being of their communities. 

We should be highly skeptical of the assumptions that underlie our current policies and systems. 

But we should not lose our faith in people, or our faith in the idea that people can come together to change our policies and systems for the better. 

What do you think? Does this resonate for you? Are you a cynic or a skeptic or both or neither? And how do you think cynicism and skepticism “show up” in our work?

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"The art of gathering" and the importance of grounding people in their purpose

Have you facilitated a meeting before? Or hosted a party?

What runs through your mind when you’re planning a gathering?

Are you a “chill host” (hint: Priya Parker, in her book, “The Art of Gathering”, suggests you shouldn’t be!)?

Source: https://www.priyaparker.com/book-art-of-gathering

Do you ask yourself why you’re gathering people (and then why again and again, until you drill down to something meaningful) and use your answer to shape your event (hint: This will help you host a meaningful, memorable gathering!).

I was invited to speak at a Comprehensive School Mental Health State Policy Academy in Charlotte, North Carolina last month. At the start of one of the days, in small groups, the meeting facilitator had us answer what I think might be the most powerful icebreaker question I’ve been asked - “Who do you dedicate your learning here today to?”

The answers from the members of our small group were vulnerable, beautiful, and heartfelt - from stories of loss to children going off to college to reflections on one’s community. It was an invitation to not just think about our school mental health work and the impact it could have, but to ground ourselves in what this work means to us.

My answer surprised even me - as I thought about school mental health and who I’d want to dedicate my learning to, my thoughts gravitated to the people closest to me who had the least amount of support for their mental health as children - my parents.

This opening question is a powerful example of a point Priya Parker underscores in her book - don’t open with logistics. Get to those eventually, but they are a buzzkill as an opener. Instead, think about the deepest “why” of why this gathering is taking place and use that to plan a powerful opening. (Note: This goes for endings too, don’t end with thank yous! Get those in along the way, but to close, get people back to the core “why” of the gathering and inspire them to make a change - however small - as a result.)

Speaking of thought-provoking openers - while I was in Charlotte for this meeting, I wandered through the city and checked out the amazing public art sprinkled throughout, and this sculpture at the entrance to a park really caught my fancy, so I had to take a quick picture. What a way to invite people to think about their time in this outdoor gathering space.

“Life is an Open Book” by Brad Spencer in The Green, Charlotte, North Carolina

Every time we come together with others, whatever shape or form that takes, however casual or formal, we have an opportunity to elevate that gathering - from something mundane to something extraordinary. Take your shot. And shoot me a note to tell me all about it!

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HOW to collaborate across your collaborative: What we can learn from Underpants Gnomes and other tips, strategies, and resources

Are you tried of hearing the word "collaborate", Reader?

I know the word can sometimes seem…empty. Something everyone pays lip service to but that we don’t often explore HOW to do well.

That’s our goal here at PoP Health - not just to talk about collaboration a lot (which, admittedly, we are guilty of!) but to also dive deeply into HOW we can do this well.

Earlier this month, we introduced the “collaborating with your collaborative” aspect of our C.A.P.E. process (see issue here) and today, we’re going to dive into the “Yes, but HOW?” question with some tips, strategies, and resources.

Can you share some tips for collaborating across your collaborative?

Move beyond information sharing. Far too often, we see collaborative meetings that are nothing more than surface-level information sharing about what each member organization is doing. This could just as easily - if not more easily - be done offline. When you convene your collaborative, make it about something that couldn’t be done offline or asynchronously - a space for creativity and generating new ideas, a space for collective sensemaking and achieving new understanding, a space for unearthing complexities and conflicts.

Make sure your members each have a clear role. Collaboration does not mean everyone does everything. Both recruitment and retention are difficult if an individual member of your collaborative doesn’t see a clear role for themselves. People’s time is limited and valuable, and collaborative membership is often on a volunteer basis, something taken on in addition to a person’s day-to-day job responsibilities. If they feel that their absence from the collaborative isn’t going to have an impact, they will not care to join or stay. When you ask someone to join the collaborative, make sure you describe their exact role and responsibilities, and why they are uniquely suited for it. And make sure one or more of those roles includes leadership of the collaborative!

Establish a system where the collaborative - collectively and also each individual member - earns their success and sees and feels the value they create. This is a lesson from happiness researcher Arthur C. Brooks. He says, “The number one thing that you can do for recruitment, for retention, the ultimate rewards that go far beyond money are making sure that you have a system where people are earning their success through their merit and personal accomplishment. They know it, they see it, and so do their friends. And they actually feel like they’re serving other people and they can see the faces of the people for whom they’re creating value.” Make sure the accomplishments the collaborative is striving for - and that individual members are pursuing - are 1) clearly defined, 2) celebrated once achieved, and 3) connected directly to the value that’s created in the community, ideally by fostering meaningful connections between collaborative members and community members so the value that’s created in the community can be truly seen and felt by collaborative members.

Unearth underlying power dynamics. As Collaborate CIC puts it, “For collaboration to be effective, we need to be able to talk about where power lies, how it plays out, and how power dynamics (and behaviors, governance, and so on) need to change to make space for everyone to genuinely contribute in ways that make sense for them.” There are various types of power (financial, political, social and other types of power) and assessing them - at individual and organizational levels - and making them explicit can help set your collaborative on a path towards consciously identifying ways to shift or share power in ways that make the work more community-driven and effective.

What are some specific strategies for collaborating across your collaborative?

Conduct a partnership survey. I know, I know, surveys get a bad rap, and justifiably so. But this is an idea for a non-cringey survey, a survey your collaborative uses to reflect on themselves. These surveys are solely for members of the collaborative, and the results help collaborative members understand who they are and what they bring to the table, where they already have a lot of energy and expertise to move things forward, and where they may have gaps that need to be filled.

We used this kind of survey in advance of our kick-off meeting with the Perry County Health Coalition in Pennsylvania. We asked about top action planning priorities; what members hope to accomplish via participation in the coalition; current coalition composition, sectors and topics represented, populations touched by coalition member organizations, and suggestions around who else to engage; alignment between member organization focus areas and focus areas identified in the most recent health assessment the coalition completed; current and desired levels of engagement in the coalition; activities and tasks members are most interested in supporting; and desired meeting format, frequency, and scheduling.

By gathering this information ahead of the meeting and then sharing the synthesized responses and drawing out the key takeaways, we were able to facilitate a much more meaningful, nuanced discussion about where to go from here.

Collectively develop a joint Theory of Change. Have you heard of the Underpants Gnomes, Reader? I feel in love with this clip when a friend introduced it to me:

In this episode of South Park, the boys encounter a group of gnomes who’ve been very busy stealing underpants as part of a big plan. Phase 1 is collect underpants. Phase 3 is profit. But in between? A giant question mark.

In the “collect underpants” context, this seems a little wild. But you’d be surprised how very often this happens in our work with public health focused coalitions and collaboratives. We have an end goal in mind and a set of activities we’re going to launch, but we haven’t actually mapped out exactly why and how we believe these activities are going to get us to that end goal.

Enter a theory of change. We are especially strong advocates for bringing your collaborative together and jointly developing a theory of change that everyone contributes to and - by the end, after rounds of revision - agrees with and endorses.

This is something we did to launch our work co-leading evaluation and learning for a whole-child development initiative in DC public schools. We got everyone together in person and had them react to an initial theory of change our team developed based on our understanding of the work. We tore it apart during this meeting, revised it, conducted follow up interviews with each partner to get their reactions to the revised version, revised it further, and finally landed upon a version that everyone “stamped” with their approval.

This was over two years ago and we STILL root all our work and evaluation in that theory of change. It has been an incredibly helpful grounding and guiding force.

Have collaborative partners lead Ignite Talks. In that same DC project, once we were a little further along into implementation, partner organizations expressed a desire to know more about the activities other partners were leading. Because as useful as our Theory of Change has proven, words on paper are no substitute for a true understanding of how the work looks, sounds, and feels on the ground where it’s happening.

One of my colleagues on the project suggested using the Ignite Talks format - “20 slides, 15 seconds a slide, 5 minutes on stage, just you and the audience”. The emphasis in this format is on highly visual slides with interesting imagery. It’s similar to the PechaKucha format, which originated in Japan, and involves 20 slides, each for 20 seconds.

We used these talks to open an in-person convening and it was lively, engaging, interesting, and everyone learned a lot about the different elements of this joint effort we were engaging in.

By emphasizing visuals, we got to see what the work looked like in action. By forcing everyone into a new presentation format, we escaped the boilerplate slides and explanations we otherwise would have gotten. Perhaps most surprisingly, by providing a tiny bit of extra structure (“20 slides, 15 seconds each” - instead of just saying “no more than 5 minutes, please”), we actually had everyone stay within the time limit - every single person. (Who else has tried the “no more than X minutes, please” route before, only to find that no one listened to you? Turns out, a little extra structure is the answer!)

What are some resources to help me collaborate with community members?

Here are just a few examples of resources we here at PoP Health have found helpful - some related to the specific tips and strategies noted above, and others more general. This is by no means a comprehensive list - please email us to share other resources and tools you’ve found helpful in collaborating across your collaborative!

• Collaborate CIC’s Common Misconceptions About Collaboration​

• The National Association of City and County Health Officials’ (NACCHO’s) Mobilizing for Action Through Planning and Partnership 2.0 resources, especially the Community Partner Assessment survey tool

• Collective Impact Forum’s Resource Library

• The various other collaboration frameworks highlighted in the previous issue of this newsletter

These tips, strategies, and resources begin to paint a picture of HOW to collaborate across your collaborative. It’s a messy, slow, challenging process - but it can also be a creative, illuminating, and rewarding one. We hope what we’ve shared helps you navigate the challenges and reap the rewards!

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Collaborating across your collaborative: helpful frameworks and questions to ask yourself

Here at PoP Health, as we spring forward, we are also springing into part two of the first phase of our C.A.P.E. process: Community Collaboration - focused specifically on collaborating across your collaborative.

What do you mean by collaborating across our collaborative?

As I read in a recent post from Collaborate CIC, a UK-based social consultancy, “Calling something collaborative doesn’t necessarily make it so.”

Having multi-sector partners around the same table doesn’t necessarily equal collaboration.

Convening partners on a regular basis doesn’t necessarily equal collaboration.

Having a shared vision and mission doesn’t necessarily equal collaboration.

True collaboration requires moving beyond sharing information and learning from one another - to taking intentional, strategic, collective ACTION.

We’ll get more into specific strategies for collaboration and action planning in future newsletters, but for now, let’s get oriented to the idea of collaborating across a collaborative.

What are some ways to think about how we collaborate across our collaborative?

There are so many frameworks for collaboration and collective action, and I don’t think any one of them are “THE” answer. I do, however, think that some of them are particularly useful in thinking through how your collaborative currently collaborates and whether you’d like to move further along the collaborative spectrum and how. These include:

• The collaboration spectrum by Tamarack Institute (see p8 of their report for a table that outlines not only the definitions below, but also the collaborative types, convening leadership, authority, shared ownership, key governance documents, and outcomes for each level of collaboration).

• ​Forms and features of collaboration, by Collaborate CIC and Dartington Service Design Lab and commissioned by The Health Foundation (check out their report for definitions and examples of each of these forms of collaboration as well as key features, including make-up of the collaboration, governance, communications, evaluation and learning, and resources).

• The community system solutions framework, published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review (the article includes key features of each of the types outlined in the diagram below, along with examples).

• The five conditions of collective impact and five equity strategies by the The Collective Impact Forum (their getting started page includes a robust set of associated tools and resources).

• The six foundations for effective collaboration, as outlined in Collaborate CIC’s Guide to Collaboration (the guide covers what collaboration is, why and when it matters, a description for these six foundations for effective collaboration, and additional resources).

• The Intersector Project’s stages of intersector collaboration and associated tools.

What questions should I be asking myself about how we collaborate with community members?

• Who do we have at the table? Who do we not have at the table? What level of engagement/involvement in the coalition should various actors have, and how can we foster strong engagement/involvement?

• What are the various power dynamics at play in our coalition (in terms of financial, political, social and other types of power)? Can we assess individual, team, and organizational power; make underlying power structures more explicit; and consciously identify ways to shift or share power in ways that make our work more community-driven and effective?

• How are we working together, and is our approach efficient and effective? Is our strategic approach designed to add unique value to the community? What infrastructure have we built for information sharing and aligning work across organizations? Are we using our meeting time to accomplish what cannot be done via email or other communication?

• How are we financing the work of our coalition and what implications does that have for what we can and cannot do, how resources are distributed, and how sustainable or not our work will be?

Are you feeling energized or overwhelmed by all this? Collaboration sounds (and is!) vital and valuable but it is also messy and difficult. It's more than worth the trouble though, so stay tuned for more strategies and ideas on how to do this well (or at least better!).

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Leveraging the power of in-person gathering

I’ve been thinking a lot about the power of in-person gathering on the professional end as well. After a long summer vacation, this Fall has been a period of reconvening in person.

Last month, we had an in-person kick off for a DC School Behavioral Health Consortium that drove home the energy and sense of community that can come simply from sitting around the same table. I also loved the icebreaker the meeting conveners used to set the stage for our time together - they shared a collage of different images representing collaboration and asked each person, as we went around the room for introductions, to share which image resonated most with them and why. What a great way to orient the group to the reason we had come together and unearth some key distinctions and nuances in how each person at the table might approach this work. We’ve gotten used to “setting the stage” activities in virtual spaces, but they are just as valuable in in-person gatherings.

Last week, we had our second annual set of Ignite presentations and data sensemaking sessions for our work (in partnership with the Center for Health and Healthcare in Schools at GW) as the Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning partner for an antiracist, whole child development initiative in DC schools. Although this kind of sharing of our work and making sense of data visuals could, technically speaking, be done virtually, there is something about the power of being seated in a circle and lending our full attention to the discussion at hand that is hard to recreate on Zoom. There is also perhaps something even more powerful about the “sideline” conversations that occur between partner organizations during an in-person gathering, especially one that includes time to share meals together and catch up informally, as we did on both days of this convening. One of our partners emailed us after the event, “I wanted to thank you all for such an impactful convening this week. It was really inspiring to be around such a thoughtful group of educators/advocates and to be able to more deeply connect the dots across the entire project. I was even able to leave with immediate steps to further collaborate with [two of the other partner organizations on particular projects].” This is exactly what we hope can arise from bringing people together.

And finally, later this week, we are kicking off our partnership with the Perry County Health Coalition in Pennsylvania with an in-person convening of the coalition - the first time they’ll be gathering in person since 2019! So we’re trying to be thoughtful about how we make this brief time together as meaningful as possible. One thing we did is send around a survey and conduct a few interviews several weeks in advance of the meeting. We’ll be sharing our findings from the survey and interviews at the meeting as a launchpad for further discussion - this approach allows us to get the more obvious and consensus-y ideas shared quickly, leaving more of our precious in-person time to navigate the areas where there is complexity, uncertainty, or disagreement.

None of this is to say there is not unique power in virtual gathering - here at PoP Health, we love facilitating virtual convenings and have lots of tips and tools to make that time meaningful, engaging, and productive.

It’s just that this past month in particular, we’ve also been thinking a lot about the power of in-person gathering and how we can leverage that.

Reader, curious to hear your thoughts - in your experience, what’s the unique value-add of gathering in person? And how can we best leverage the power of those (sometimes rare) opportunities to be together in the same physical space? Drop me a note!

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15% and 15x solutions

Do you ever feel powerless to tackle the big problems your community faces?

I often feel that way, and I think many of us do.

On the other hand, do you ever feel like our solutions aren’t enough - not big enough, not disruptive enough, not transformational enough?

Especially when trying to improve community health and well-being, it can often feel constraining to work within existing systems instead of thinking about how we dismantle and rebuild the systems themselves.

My colleague and I are facilitating a national convening next week, and the group will be brainstorming and prioritizing public health solutions to address dementia. We’ve tried to ensure each session incorporates a slightly different approach to brainstorming - to keep things interesting and make sure new ideas keep flowing.

In one of the sessions, I wanted to address both these struggles - sometimes we get stuck brainstorming because it feels like the only way to change things is big, huge, systems-level transformation and we feel powerless to make that happen. On the other hand, sometimes we get stuck brainstorming because all we can come up with are ideas that would make small changes on the margins, but nothing that feels big enough to create real change.

The reality is, we need to brainstorm and move forward on both fronts.

​15% Solutions, a type of Liberating Structure (i.e., alternatives to presentations, managed discussion, and other conventional structures that typically guide the way groups work together), invites those brainstorming to consider: “What is your 15 percent? Where do you have discretion and freedom to act? What can you do without more resources or authority?”

I love the way the Liberating Structures website describes what is made possible through this approach: “You can reveal the actions, however small, that everyone can do immediately. At a minimum, these will create momentum, and that may make a BIG difference. 15% Solutions show that there is no reason to wait around, feel powerless, or fearful. They help people pick it up a level. They get individuals and the group to focus on what is within their discretion instead of what they cannot change.”

I have found it works well to pair this 15% solution question with another question borrowed from Liberating Structures that’s about getting 10 times (or we’ll make it 15 times to make it parallel with 15%!) bolder - “If you were [fifteen] times bolder, what big idea would you recommend? What first step would you take to get started?”

What’s made possible through this approach is the flip side of what’s made possible via 15% solutions - there are bold, transformational things that would move us towards transforming community health (or whatever you’re trying to transform!) and while they may not be within our control, we can identify some initial steps to take towards them.

I think pairing these questions together is powerful. You can have participants brainstorm 15% solutions on one color of post-it note in the first part of a session and 15x solutions on another color in the second part of the session.

We can both be empowered by the things we can do fully within our circle of influence and inspired by the things that are more aspirational and transformational - which may take a lot longer (even generations) to accomplish but can still be pursued by starting with a first step.

​Let me know if you have tried this kind of brainstorming before or have other approaches that have worked well!

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The value of ONE right door

Have you heard the phrase "no wrong door" before?

A Google search didn't bring up a standard or formal definition, but the description I found that most aligns with my understanding of the concept is this:

"The vision for No Wrong Door is that every door in the region’s healthcare and human services system should be the right door with a range of services being accessible to everyone from multiple points of entry."

This is a lovely and logical idea in theory.

But I have come to question how well it works in practice.

I work closely with a school mental health collaborative in DC and at our meeting a couple weeks ago, one of the members shared with us results from an evaluation of DC's school behavioral health expansion. There were bright spots and progress to celebrate, but one thing that stood out to me in terms of challenges that remain was that about half of students reported still not knowing where to go for help in the school. We have heard our partners who lead parent advocacy in DC lament about this too - even parents who are deeply engaged in advocating for their children don’t know where to turn or what resources are available at their own schools. This is clearly not due to a lack of involvement on their part, so why is this happening?

Let me share a counterintuitive guess with you - I don’t think the problem is that there is nowhere for them to turn. I think the problem is there are too many places for them to turn.

This is a theme we heard repeatedly in community input gathering to inform the Fairfax Children's Behavioral Health Blueprint.

Imagine that you’re Kira - a mom with two elementary school aged kids, one of whom is in need of mental health supports. You reach out to various folks within the school and community for suggestions, and each person hands you a list of resources available for kids with mental health needs. There are so many resources that you’re overwhelmed about where to start and how to choose one. But you decide to just pick one at random and call them. Turns out they are no longer in business. You try another number. They don’t have any spots available. You move to the next number on the list. They do have availability starting next month but your income is too high for you to be eligible. The next place doesn’t have supports for the kind of mental health issue your child is struggling with. And on, and on, and on.

While the idea of "no wrong door" is great in theory, in practice, it often involves someone behind every door being equipped with a list of other places and people to point someone to. This would be fine if the lists were kept updated, limited to services that were currently available, categorized by eligibility, and tailored to specific needs - but they are rarely any of those things, much less all four.

What people most need is not a laundry list of generic resources that may or may not be available to or appropriate for them. What they need is a way to navigate to the right solution for them - whether that is by way of a person (like a navigator or case manager), an interactive database (imagine being Kira and having a website where you could type in your child’s age, their mental health needs, your family income, your insurance, etc. and receive a list of organizations that currently offer services that meet your specific needs and eligibility), or some other solution (Have an example or ideas? Email me!)

What people often need is one right door - someone or something to help them navigate through all that's available to find the right fit for them.

This is true for mental health support, for childcare, for any number of other needs people are seeking services for.

As anyone who’s ever been handed a laundry list of resources can vouch for, sometimes too many doors can actually leave us feeling lost. If we can shift more systems to create one right door, maybe we can connect far more people with the services and supports they need - not just in theory, but in reality.

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