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.
Why you need champions (not the Super Bowl kind)
How would you define a champion?
You might think about a Super Bowl or Olympic champion - that would be dictionary definition #1 (“someone or something, especially a person or animal, that has beaten all other competitors in a competition”).
But I’m thinking about dictionary definition #2: “a person who enthusiastically supports, defends, or fights for a person, belief, right, or principle”
Public health isn't a systems business
It might not be something you’d expect me to say - me, someone who has drunk the “systems change” Kool-aid from way back in my undergrad engineering days throughout my public health training and into launching PoP Health (where our entire mission is to work with community coalitions to transform health through systems change).
Our public health frameworks are failing us - here’s the one thing we’re missing
Our public health frameworks are failing us.
They're true. AND they're failing us.
Let me explain why.
I had the pleasure of giving a Lightning Talk at the National Network of Public Health Institutes Open Forum conference in Pittsburgh earlier this month (it was a balm to the soul to be in the company of fellow community-based public health practitioners!)
4 questions on the path to action
I’ve been sitting with some hard truths lately.
Systems are complex. Dynamic. Interconnected.
Working together in a coalition to change those systems is hard. Slow. Complicated.
That’s just the reality of what we’re trying to do.
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.
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).
Taking action when everything is on fire
Whew, it's been a couple weeks, hasn't it?
Public health is being further threatened than it already was in every direction - halting of foreign aid work; an attempted coup in the form of a spending freeze; an anti-vaccine skeptic nominated to lead the nation's health agency; the list - sadly - goes on.
Why we must ACT in 2025
I opened the new year inviting you to join PoP Health at the intersection of hope and action to transform health in our communities.
Earlier this month, we dove into the idea of hope.
Today, we’re focused on ACTION.