What is your coalition’s UNIQUE value add?
What’s your coalition’s unique value add in your community?
Here at PoP Health, we’ve been thinking a lot about why coalitions sometimes feel stuck in neutral (and the key to shifting gears).
Our five steps to strengthen coalition foundations - the Coalition Core 5 - begins with shared clarity around why you exist as a coalition. More specifically, what is your coalition’s unique value add in your community.
The “rockstar” trap - the biggest threat to sustaining your coalition’s work
My first full time public health job was at a state health department, working with schools to implement evidence based youth violence prevention programs. Principals and school counselors were often the rockstars behind this work - until they weren’t.
4 options in the face of collapsing systems
If you, like me, are distressed about what’s happening at the CDC, what’s happening around vaccines, what’s been happening with public health grants and research being terminated, and more - I see you.
Go ahead, reinvent the wheel - just do it faster
When you hear the phrase “reinventing the wheel”, how does it make you feel? I’ve always thought of it as a bad thing, something to be avoided, a sign that I’m doing things wrong.
Can't engage coalition members? Here's what you're missing.
Do you feel like attendance at your coalition meetings is dwindling, or that everyone’s logging onto Zoom but multitasking during the meeting? Or maybe folks are showing up and engaged, but it feels like pulling teeth to get anyone to provide input or take action between meetings?
The story matters more than the words
Howdy,
Did that "howdy" make you double take? Hi, hello, hey, yoo-hoo, yo, howdy - so many possible one-word greetings. Don't they each make you feel a little bit different?
I love words. As an avid reader, a writer, and just a human in this world, I love words.
Why people forget facts but remember stories - an intro to Effective Storytelling
Is your summer off to as hot and joyful a start as mine, Reader?
Our family spent the last week at an all-family violin camp in the Blue Ridge mountains, and it was a joy on so many levels (our girls did not want to come home!).
Being surrounded by music all week had me forgetting the heat (despite the lack of AC at camp) and remembering just how powerful art is and how every piece of art tells a story.
Have you heard the quote about how people forget facts but remember stories? That's definitely true but misses a key piece of the puzzle. People remember stories because they make them FEEL.
Get to ACTION to transform health in your community with PoP Health's action planning framework
I have an extra hop in my step and a desperate desire to GET. THINGS. DONE. (Currently at the top of my home list is tackling a round of Spring cleaning, beginning with our completely out-of-control basement…but I digress).
How about you?
In our work with community coalitions, getting to ACTION is often a major pain point. So let’s dive right in.
A fish, an elephant, and an iceberg: Orienting community towards root causes and systems
When a community is trying to address a public health problem, the immediate causes are often the most apparent.
Too many youth aren't physically active. Why? They don't understand the value of physical activity or the consequences of not being active. What should we do? An education and mass communication campaign to help them understand this value and these consequences, so that they are motivated to be more active.