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.
Why most coalitions feel stuck in neutral (and the key to shifting gears)
For the last few months, we’ve been talking about how public health isn’t actually a systems business. It’s a people business.
In a world of bots, be a HUMAN - it’s key to your coalition’s success
As we’re highlighting through this series, public health is, at its core, a people business.
So, naturally, one key piece of advice for health coalition leaders to keep in mind: Be a human.
In an era of artificial intelligence and soulless corporations, there’s something to be said for simply being human.
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 ways to center humanity in your work
Our political and business leaders may be failing to center humanity right now, but that doesn’t mean we should too - in fact, I think that means we should be even more intentional about centering humanity.
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).
What organizing IS and ISN'T
Unfortunately, everything is still on fire, and the public’s health (and SO much else) remains under threat.
I talked earlier this month about how taking action requires a) actually planning and committing to take action and b) organizing.
But what even is organizing?
Today, I want to share a little primer on what organizing IS and what it IS NOT.
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.
HOW to tell a powerful story + tips to transport and activate your audience
I’ve been leaning on beach reads this summer (to be honest, I lean on them year-round) and have always loved being transported to new places through stories.
But let’s be real, it’s easy to transport a reader to a beautiful beach on vacation. It’s a lot harder to transport them into, say, the lives of families in rural America.
A Participatory Evaluation HOW TO: tips and tools for sensemaking, storytelling, and more
It was college reunion weekend at my alma mater (wahoowa!), and in addition to taking a few (literal) walks down memory lane, I thought a lot about feeling a sense of community and what magic combination of ingredients is needed to create that.
Shared experiences - especially those where you gain something of value and even more so those where you create something of value - are part of that secret sauce.
And participatory evaluation, when done well, checks all those boxes.