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.

And I do think they matter. As our little greeting exercise shows, words do evoke feelings, and they communicate all kinds of things (the mood you're in, how well you know the person you're talking to, how formal the context is, and so on and so forth).

BUT I don’t think words matter as much as policy or practice. It goes back to the old saying, actions speak louder than words.

If you’ve seen the conversation around whether to use the term unhoused or homeless or persons experiencing homelessness - I always come out of it thinking: 1) ask the people themselves (Folks have. The vast majority of them continue to prefer the term homeless.) and 2) WHO CARES if you aren’t DOING something about it?

As usual, McSweeney’s sarcasm captures it better than I can - “Our City’s New Initiative Will End Homelessness by Calling It Something Else”. Changing our words doesn’t mean we’re changing our actions - in fact, changing words often distracts from the fact that we’re not changing our actions. Much of the time, changing our words is a whole lot of virtue signaling and not much else.

When it comes to community health and well-being, changing actions - changing policy and practice - is what matters. That requires changing minds. And that, in turn, requires a compelling story.

This is where public health - and movements to advance public health - have fallen very, very short.

We should be FAR more obsessed with shaping the narrative than with word choice. As I’ve said before, we need to tell more stories (it's why PoP Health hosts a "Story Space" at the annual community health event we co-organize, sharing stories with kids about our minds, emotions, and connections to others).

But it's not just our kids who need stories. Our communities do too.

How do we tell compelling stories that place the blame on the system and not the individual? How do we tell powerful stories that make the case for prevention instead of after-the-fact treatment? How do we tell stories that build community and bring more people under our tent, instead of further alienating those we need to persuade?

THIS is what we should be obsessing about.

Words can evoke emotions, but stories are what change minds.

I find the work of organizations like Frameworks Institute and Hollywood, Health, and Society to be quite compelling on this front.

In my little corner of the world, I’ve tried to shape a story around our approach to health and am currently working on shaping a story around the impact of corporate power on our health and environment and what we can do about it.

How are you shaping stories in your work and in your communities? Or, if you aren’t yet, how might you want to moving forward? Drop me a line and let me know!

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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.

But even stories about the same place and same community can be quite different from one another.

As J.D. Vance hits the news cycle as the Republican vice presidential nominee, I’ve been thinking a lot about an alternative to his Hillbilly Elegy (a memoir about life in rural America, which I did not read) - namely, Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (a novel about life in rural Appalachia, which I read and found deeply moving).

Hillbilly Elegy (although it received critical acclaim from many upon release) has been described as condescending and inauthentic. I suspect the reason for this is the nature of the stories the book tells. As one Appalachian Studies expert put it, “One of the most troubling things to me about the book is that it talks a lot about unemployment and poverty, domestic violence, the opioid crisis, but it never gives you context for why those things exist the way they do in Appalachia.”

In contrast, one journalist notes, “Kingsolver slyly weaves the history of her home into Demon’s harrowing tale. From the Whiskey Rebellion to the boom and bust of the tobacco and coal industries, she describes a community preyed on for decades as governments and companies extracted their resources. And then came the opioid crisis.”

If you haven’t read Demon Copperhead yet, pick it up now - it’ll show you the power of story in transporting us much better than I can. But you know me, I’m going to try anyway! Here are some tips, strategies, and resources for transporting and activating your audience via powerful storytelling.

Can you share some tips for effective storytelling?

Storyboard. I have loved Echo Rivera’s trainings around presentations (which are, after all, simply a story you’re telling!) and one thing she emphasizes is that Step 1 is storyboarding. You have to map out the flow of the story you’re telling from the get-go and make sure it’s going to leave the audience with the right takeaways. So don’t jump to writing, slide creation, or anything else until you’ve taken the time to storyboard.

Get personal. Here at PoP Health, we’ve been working on a project for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention focused on how to improve public health cancer prevention messaging and one of our key takeaways has been the need to get more personal. What does this look like? It’s not about dry facts or abstract concepts. Instead, think personal true stories from “people like me” that are accompanied by the faces of those people, embedding health information in TV shows, appealing to one’s identity (tapping into a shared identity of being a mom, encouraging kids to “be a helper” instead of “help others”).

Be relatable. Use words your audience would use. Use metaphors to help boil down complex concepts into something your audience can wrap their arms around. Keep it local.

Get visual. Drawings, photos, videos, GIFs, all can be helpful, especially when they feature real people, make your audience laugh, or convey a powerful message. Infographics and data visualization - when done well - are also great tools.

What are some specific strategies for effective storytelling?

Co-create stories and messages: You know who already knows the real stories that will resonate with your audience? The people who’ve lived those stories. Also known as your audience. Co-create stories and messages with them.

Interpret your data for your audience: Use a storytelling sentence. Don’t leave it to chance or someone else’s interpretation. Don't assume the numbers speak for themselves. It's your story - so, tell it! Along the same lines, take this great advice from Stephanie Evergreen and make your data dashboard a webpage. Why? Because then, you’ll be telling an actual story! And as Stephanie says, “That narrative is where you get nuance. Expansion. Explanation. Clarification.”

Tailor content: First, you need to tailor content to your audience (based on a wide range of factors that are too much to get into here - more to come on that in the future), to the channel you’re using (please don’t post your static flier content to Tik Tok or vice versa!), and to the current and local contexts. Also tailor content to the type of deliverable (Website? Report? Social media post? Podcast?) and tailor the deliverable you’re choosing to work for your particular goals and audience. Even within a single deliverable, try to make it modular, so you can easily toggle in and out “modules” for different audiences based on who needs X background information or who cares about Y data.

What are some resources to help me tell powerful stories?

Echo Rivera’s free 6 Gears of Creating Engaging Presentations training

Stephanie Evergreen’s “delightful, strategy shifting, and totally free ideas for your next data viz”

Potential Energy Coalition’s Talk Like a Human guide (I think their lessons on how to communicate climate change apply much, much more broadly!)

Here’s the thing, effectively sharing what we know, do, and learn is essential to transforming health in our communities. And there is no better way to do that than to tell stories. So embrace your identity as a storyteller and get REALLY good at it - the results will surprise you.

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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.

If you missed the last issue of Community Threads, be sure to check it out first, as it provides an overview of PoP Health’s participatory evaluation approach. With that approach in mind, today’s issue is diving into HOW we actually do participatory evaluation. Let's jump right in.

Can you share some tips for participatory evaluation?

Begin with the end goal in mind, and design your evaluation and learning process accordingly. What do community members, coalition members, and the evaluation and learning team most want to learn and why?

Consider how community members can co-own - and meaningfully benefit - from every stage of the evaluation and learning process, from initial brainstorming and planning through data collection and analysis through sensemaking and storytelling. How is each stage of the process structured to allow community members to drive or co-lead the process? How is each stage of the process designed to ensure community members walk away with new capacity, connections, resources, and supports?

Develop infrastructure for responsive feedback and continuous quality improvement. You’ve heard this tip before from me and I'm repeating it here because it can't be overstated and hardly anyone truly does it! Yes, a key goal of evaluation is to understand impact but an equally if not more important goal is to improve the work. It's vital to set up infrastructure (time, resources, systems) from the outset so you are flexible and nimble enough to implement course corrections and improvements in real time based on analysis of monitoring data.

Diversify and tailor your evaluation deliverables, and make them modular where possible. Here is a slide from PoP Health’s Evaluation 101 workshop that includes a range of possible deliverables through which to share evaluation results and stories (and there are many more beyond what's listed here).

Don’t limit yourself here, get creative! Data dashboards are all the rage these days, but I love Stephanie Evergreen’s take on them, especially for something community facing - make it a webpage instead. You can also tailor content to different audiences - we often do this via briefs/two-pagers, one for community members, one for policymakers, one for funders, and so on. They each care about different things. We have also had success with making our briefs modular - having “modules” (short sections of the brief) that can be toggled in or out of a brief depending on who needs X background information or who cares about Y data.

What are some specific strategies for participatory evaluation?

There are many, but here are a few I especially appreciate for the meaningful role community and coalition members play:

Community based system dynamics modeling: A key part of evaluation and learning in public health is understanding dynamic, complex, messy systems. In the case of our work on school mental health in DC, students, family members, teachers, school administrators, policymakers, and others may have completely different understandings of the school mental health system. So we engaged in what’s called Community Based System Dynamics, in partnership with the Social System Dynamics Lab – this process uses participatory group model building approaches to explore the system in question. We held modeling workshops with students, with caregivers, with teachers, and with our multisector Stakeholder Learning Community. During the workshops, groups huddled around large sheets of paper, discussing, writing things down, crossing things out, drawing arrows, and so on. They produced a series of causal loop diagrams, which I then synthesized and integrated into this version of our systems map. Much more on this in a prior PoP Health newsletter here.

Data placemats for collective sensemaking: Community members and coalition members have experiences, expertise, and perspectives that lead them to insights your evaluation team, program team, and funders are apt to miss entirely. So don't make the mistake of leaving them out of the conversation. I love using highly visual data placemats and data posters to bring coalition members and community members into the process of making sense of data and drawing insights - about what we've learned so far, how to continually improve the initiatives we work on, and what other information we need to gather moving forward. We’ve recently used data placemats (during a coalition-wide data sensemaking session) and data posters (during a community-wide symposium) to share initial data from evaluation of the BIRTH Plan with our community and coalition partners in Pittsburgh, pairing the visuals with discussion questions that help elicit their thoughts on what they take away from the data, their insights about how to improve the work, and what additional information they’d most like to see in the future.

Sharing personal narratives: Nothing is quite as powerful as a story in someone’s own voice. Capturing personal narratives of community members/program participants/those influenced by a policy is a vital participatory evaluation strategy. In addition to focus groups and interviews, there are many creative ways to do this, including video journals, audio diaries, photo voice, and more. I especially love this idea of a participatory video process focused on stories of significant change. Participants are given the chance to take part in a Participatory Video process at baseline; stories of Most Significant Change are collected via structured story circles at midline; each circle selects one story to record on video. A participatory analysis identifies themes and recommendations. Given consent, videos can be shared so stakeholders learn directly from participants’ stories.

Community collaboration strategies: The community collaboration strategies we have featured previously (i.e., focus groups in a box, data walks, and street stalls) can also all be used in the context of evaluation and learning.

What are some resources to help me engage in participatory evaluation?

I’d like to leave you with a few resources I’ve found especially practical and useful in terms of participatory evaluation. As always, drop me a note to share other helpful resources or tools you’ve come across!

• ​Participatory Evaluation: Theories + Methods for Remote Work(a guide I refer to regularly for meeting facilitation ideas, whether virtual or in-person!) from Evaluation + Learning Consulting

• ​Community-Driven Data and Evaluation Strategies to Transform Power and Place (hot off the presses from Build Healthy Places)

• ​Participatory Evaluation Toolkit from Health Nexus (which provides a great overview of 7+ specific techniques)

As always, we share these tips, strategies, and resources in the hopes that they help you understand HOW to engage in participatory evaluation.

Participatory evaluation is likely going to be messier, slower, and more expensive than more traditional evaluation approaches. But on the flip side… You’ll be driven by community. You’ll learn more. You’ll create greater and more sustained change in your community.

The pros definitely outweigh the cons in my book - what about for you?

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HOW to get to action with your collaborative: tips and tools for brainstorming, prioritizing, and more

Is it just me, or are you feeling the Maycember vibes too?

In addition to counting down to the end of the school year and to summer, I know many nonprofits and coalitions are also nearing the end of their fiscal year, which means new grants and projects might be on the horizon - so it’s a great time to think about what effective action planning looks like.

If you missed the last issue of Community Threads, be sure to check it out first, as it provides an overview of PoP Health’s action planning framework. With that framework in mind, today’s issue is diving into HOW we can implement that framework to get our collaboratives to action. Without further ado, let’s dive in, Q&A style.
​

Can you share some tips for action planning?

Move towards the middle. It might be tempting to start with the question of “What should we do?” But this is exactly the wrong place to start. Begin by grounding yourself, with a particular focus on 1) orienting towards root causes and systems (otherwise, it’s easy to end up with a plan that attempts to place bandaids on the most visible/urgent problems, without diving into the underlying structures and root causes that created those problems) and 2) defining your coalition’s unique value-add (what do you collectively bring to the table that other organizations/agencies/actors in your community don’t?). Then, jump straight to the end - what impact do you wish to have? What are you seeking to change? Get as specific as possible. With the beginning and the end clearly defined, then work towards the middle to define your specific action steps in a way that addresses root causes, aligns with your value-add, and helps achieve your desired impact.

Brainstorm with abandon. Think small and think big at the same time with 15% and 15x solutions. Consider what is your 15% where you have the discretion and freedom to act without more resources and authority and what actions you can take immediately. Also consider what big idea you would recommend if you were to be 15 times bolder, and what the first step towards that idea would be. 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. Also consider unique brainstorming questions - I saw a great thread on this recently on LinkedIn, here are some of the ones that stood out to me:

• Your goal is to get fired: What ideas are you proposing?

• What’s one thing you see others do, and you’re thinking it’s crazy we’re not doing it?

• Pick a problem the organization needs to solve. Tell me how you'd solve it with an unlimited budget. Tell me how you'd solve it with no budget. (This is similar to the 15%/15x solution approach!)

Niche down. As we often hear in the consulting world, there are “riches in the niches.” When you “niche down” and narrow your audience and services, you can speak to that very specific audience in a way that resonates deeply and makes people recognize that you understand and can address their specific needs. It’s the same for any work or communication we undertake, whether as a coalition or an organization - we can’t be everything to everyone, but if we “niche down,” we might be surprised at just how effective we can be.

Develop infrastructure for responsive feedback and continuous quality improvement. Making sure you are flexible and nimble enough to be responsive to feedback and continually improve is the linchpin of the entire action planning framework we’ve laid out. And you can’t leave that to chance (believe me, I’ve been there…everyone has the best of intentions, but then, life happens, and there’s simply no time/bandwidth/buy-in to take stock of things regularly and make changes accordingly). Instead, build the infrastructure at the outset so time, resources, and systems are already in place to ensure regular monitoring and the careful analysis of monitoring information and the implementation of course corrections and improvements based on that analysis. Hold yourselves accountable - it will boost your impact by leaps and bounds.

What are some specific strategies for action planning?

Action planning is such a rich, multi-step process that I can’t pick just a few specific strategies as I’ve done for other elements of our C.A.P.E. process. Instead, I’m going to identify some key sets of approaches.

Brainstorming approaches: Here at PoP health, we love using post-its during in-person brainstorms and virtual equivalents on Zoom (Jamboard (which is sunsetting soon) or Mural are what we usually use; you can also have people throw ideas into the chat). For more detailed, in-depth, and asynchronous brainstorming, we love using Google Sheets - we try to structure the sheets in a very clear way and then let folks add their ideas in the appropriate sheets/rows/columns in response to particular categories, questions, types of information, etc.

Prioritization approaches: For in-person prioritization, sticker dots are our favorite (they even sell glittery ones, which can add some pizazz to your meetings). Mentimeter can also be great for in-person or virtual settings where you want to share results in real-time. For asynchronous prioritization, a virtual survey can be a great tool.

Action plan writing approaches: We’ve had success drawing a timeline on flipchart paper and having people place their action steps (each one written on a post note) on the literal timeline, and even taking an extra step to match each action step with a particular organization/person. We also love a good action plan template - the timeline idea can help with identifying the action, who’s responsible, and timing, but often we also want to identify the resources required, the collaborators required, potential barriers and how to address them, and who needs to be informed about the action.

What are some resources to help me action plan with our collaborative?

Here are just a few examples of resources we here at PoP Health have found helpful. This is by no means a comprehensive list - please email us to share other resources and tools you’ve found helpful in action planning with your collaborative!

• ​Liberating Structures (sidenote: I’ve seen these used poorly/thoughtlessly, but when used intentionally and judiciously, they can fulfill their intended potential and “foster lively participation in groups of any size” in a way that moves you further along your action planning process).

• ​The Best Brainstorming Tools of 2024 (+ Tips and Techniques)​

• ​7 Essential Project Management Techniques In 2024​

I hope these tips, strategies, and resources help plant some helpful seeds in terms of action planning with your collaborative. It can be an overwhelming, “one step forward, two steps back” kind of journey. But hopefully it is also a meaningful and productive journey towards an actionable plan that can create real change in your community.

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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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HOW to put community voices in the driver’s seat

Are you ever told to do something and find yourself wondering, “Yes, but HOW?”

With PoP Health’s 2024 newsletter series, we want to be sure to at least begin to answer that question. For each phase of our C.A.P.E. process that we introduce, we’ll have an initial post orienting us to the topic and a second post that answers the “Yes, but HOW?” question.

So earlier this month, we introduced the first phase of our C.A.P.E. process, Community Collaboration, with a focus specifically on collaboration with community members (see issue here). Today, we’re here to share a set of FAQs that dive into tips, strategies, and resources about how to do this work and put community voices in the driver’s seat.

Can you share some tips for collaborating with community members?

Community voice isn’t enough if we merely hear it, but don’t listen to and act on it: Have a plan in place and hold yourself accountable to what you will DO based on what community members have to say.

Community members’ time is precious - treat it that way:

• Don’t make community members repeat themselves - gather all the community input that’s already been collected in the community, including by other organizations and groups, and make sure you 1) learn from what’s already collected and 2) avoid duplicating what’s already collected.

• Don’t make community members come to yet another meeting if it’s not necessary - there are likely dozens of community groups already gathering regularly that talk about the topics you’re exploring, so reach out to them, see if you can attend their meetings, listen, take notes, and let that information drive your planning process.

• Don’t make community members share their time and expertise for free - compensate them. But remember that financial compensation is only one piece of the puzzle - to treat community members’ time as precious, you need to actually act on what you hear from them.

Build lasting, trusting, mutual relationships with community members:

• Don’t be a fair weather friend - have a sustained presence in the community and continue to get to know and work together with community members, don’t reach out just when you need something from them.

• Build collective capacity of the community - consider how to build on existing strengths and assets of the community and help community members build their own capacity and power - financial, political, and otherwise.

What are some specific strategies for collaborating with community members?

Focus the conversation through Focus Groups in a Box. Those best equipped to gather input from community members are the leaders and organizations that community members already trust and go to for support. If you want your work to be driven by the perspectives and experiences of community members, and the specific information you're seeking hasn’t already been collected in the community, consider awarding small research grants to community partners that are already gathering places for community members, so they can lead their own focus groups. Develop a standard focus group guide and reporting template to share with them, so they can lead conversations using the guide and report back what they hear using the reporting template.

In PoP Health’s work with the Allegheny County Infant Health Equity Coalition, our client Healthy Start Pittsburgh awarded these research grants, and PoP Health developed the standardized focus group guide and reporting template that was shared with grantees. The information we gathered through this process is directly reflected in the resulting action plan. This approach 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.

Share data and drive prioritization via Data Walks. We are huge advocates of taking a data-driven approach to community health improvement. But data does not live in a vacuum - it is only in interpreting data that we can inform efforts to transform health in our communities. And the question becomes - who is interpreting the data? It is vital that community members have an opportunity to review, understand, interpret, and utilize data about their own community. One way to do this is via data walks.

In PoP Health’s work with the Partnership for a Healthier Fairfax and the Fairfax County Health Department, we will be helping synthesize insights from a series of data walks the health department is conducting with community groups across the County. During the data walks, community data will be shared directly with community members in a visual, easily digestible form. Their reflections and thoughts on what's most in important will directly feed into the prioritization process used to identify priorities for the county's community health improvement plan.

Widen your reach with Street Stalls. Community led focus groups and data walks are great, but here's the thing - only a certain type of community member is already active in existing organizations or likely to come to an event like a data walk. There’s another type - actually many types - of community members that won’t. 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).

PoP Health used this approach to gather input to inform the Children’s Behavioral Health Blueprint led by Healthy Minds Fairfax. With a simple tri-fold poster board (don’t underestimate the low-tech options!), a list of resources to vote on (using sticky dots) to indicate what they found most helpful, and an open-ended question to respond to (with post-it-notes and markers), 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.

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 personally found helpful in our work. This is by no means a comprehensive list - please email us to share other resources and tools you’ve found helpful in collaborating with community members!

• Facilitating Power’s The Spectrum of Community Engagement to Ownership

• The National Association of City and County Health Officials’ (NACCHO’s) Mobilizing for Action Through Planning and Partnership 2.0 resources, especially the Power Primer supplement

• ​Asset Based Community Development Institute

• Human Impact Partners’ (HIP’s) Resources for Collaboration and Power Sharing and Activities to Deepen Your Power-Building Analysis

We hope these tips, strategies, and resources help begin to paint a picture of HOW to collaborate with community members and place more power in their hands.

It’s not a straightforward process, and if you’re anything like me, Reader, you’ll make plenty of mistakes along the way. But it’s absolutely vital and unquestionably worth it - we can’t transform health in our community without community members in the driver’s seat.

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How to keep people engaged in community health improvement efforts

Have you ever struggled to keep people engaged in a community health improvement effort (or any effort, for that matter)?

I work with a lot of community coalitions and collaboratives, and most of them are volunteer-based, which makes this question of how to maintain engagement especially important. But even those that compensate their members for their involvement need to consider the question of how to keep people involved and inspired and motivated to participate and act in meaningful ways.

In my line of work, with public health focused coalitions, people are generally at the table because they care - they care about the health of the community and they want to help make it better. But there are so many services and supports to coordinate and so many partners to collaborate with; it’s hard to know where to start; and there is simply not enough time in the day, especially since most coalition members have their actual day jobs to do.

Whether you are recruiting members or trying to hold onto the ones you already have, what’s the secret to keeping folks engaged?

This week, I came across an interview with Arthur C. Brooks (a Harvard professor who studies, teaches, and writes about happiness) about “the secrets to happiness at work,” and I think it’s spot on and extremely relevant to this question of how we keep coalition members engaged in the work of the coalition.

Here’s what he says on this topic: “The two parts of work that really matter [for happiness at work] are not title, not money, not admiration, not power, [but] earned success and serving other people.”

Here’s how he describes these two concepts among workers: “They feel like they’re earning their success, which is to say that they’re creating value with their lives and with their work lives, that their accomplishments are moving the needle and they’re being recognized for those accomplishments. And number two, they feel like they’re serving people so that they’re needed.”

Do these two concepts resonate with you?

They did for me - when I think of the jobs I’ve been least satisfied with and the ones I’ve loved the most (including what I do now!), earned success and serving other people do seem like distinguishing factors.

In this interview, Brooks goes on to say, “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.”

And this, I think, is what community coalitions and collaboratives (and public health organizations and agencies more broadly) should be thinking about. How can we give people clear roles and responsibilities, where accomplishments they are striving for are clearly defined and celebrated once achieved? How can we make meaningful connections between the members/employees of our coalitions/organizations and the community members we serve, so the value we’re creating can be truly seen and felt?

These are the questions I leave you with today- I would love to hear your thoughts!

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The power of a storytelling sentence

When it comes to community health improvement, we often find ourselves in situations where we need to tell a compelling story. To name just a few:

We need to convey the impact and value of a particular health issue to a policymaker so they are motivated to write or pass legislation that would help address it.

We need to share the impact a policy or program is having with our funders and communities so they are inspired to help sustain it.

We need to share data from a community survey so community partners understand the top health-related needs community members are facing so that their organizations can take action to meet those needs.

PoP Health is knee-deep in each of these types of storytelling at the moment. And we’re often using data - both quantitative and qualitative - to tell these stories. We typically have a LOT of data - thankfully we work with amazing analysts who can synthesize this data into powerful, digestible visualizations.

But visualizations only tell a story if you can interpret them effectively.

One of the things I’ve come to appreciate deeply is the immense power of a storytelling sentence.

Take a data visualization and ask yourself, what do I want the person seeing this to takeaway from this?

And then write that down as simply and briefly as you can.

That’s your storytelling sentence.

Maybe it’s the title of your graph or visual, maybe it’s a summary sentence you place to the side or below.

It sounds so simple but it’s amazing how often we skip this step. This happens a lot especially with data dashboards.

You might build a high-quality, dynamic data dashboard. But will a community member or community partner seeing that dashboard know at first glance what they should be taking away from it? If you add those storytelling sentences, they will!

So this is a call to tell your story. Don’t leave it to chance or someone else’s interpretation. Don't assume the numbers speak for themselves. It's your story - so, tell it!

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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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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.

Not only are immediate causes often the most apparent, the solutions required to address them are often (relatively) non-controversial and don't require the upheaval of established systems.

But to truly transform health in communities, we need to move beyond the immediate. We need to 1) drill down to root causes and 2) fly up for a systems wide view.

On the first point -

WHY are too many youth not physically active? Do they have safe spaces to run and play in their neighborhood, and do their schedules allow them to do so? Are the costs of joining recreational sports leagues prohibitive? Are the apps on their phones designed to be addictive, so they have less time for everything else?

To get community members thinking about root causes, one exercise I have found quite helpful is a fishbone diagram (where you start with the problem, which is the "head" of the fish, and then brainstorm multiple causes, as well as causes of causes). This diagramming is often paired with the "5 whys" facilitation strategy (where you keep asking "why" five times to drill down to deeper root causes). The idea here is that this process can help identify countermeasures (things that prevent root causes) instead of merely solutions (things that might just put a bandaid on the problem by treating a symptom instead of a root cause).

On the second point -

HOW might systems be transformed to encourage more physical activity among youth?

First, we need to be able to take a step back and see the system as a whole. I find the elephant analogy an incredibly helpful way to remind ourselves and our communities to do this. It’s an ancient parable you may have heard before about blind/blindfolded individuals encountering an elephant for the first time. Each person feels only one part of the elephant and comes to a conclusion about what they are encountering based on that. It leads to a lot of misconceptions and no single person who has the full and accurate picture.

To take community thinking a step further, from recognizing there is a broader system to understanding how we can improve that system, I love using the iceberg model of systems thinking. It's a great way to reminder ourselves that what we can see of a problem is usually only the tip of the iceberg. "We know that an iceberg has only 10 percent of its total mass above the water while 90 percent is underwater. But that 90 percent is what the ocean currents act on, and what creates the iceberg’s behavior at its tip." Most public health issues are like this as well! I especially appreciate the way this model helps community members walk through the process of identifying trends, underlying structures, and ultimately mental models.

I've often had clients point to a fairly surface-level approach or solution and say, "This is what our community said they want to see." This may be true, and I'm 100% on board with community-driven approaches. However, we also need to ask ourselves if we've walked ourselves and our communities through the kind of tools above to make sure that the solutions we're brainstorming are oriented towards root causes and systems.

Have you had success with setting the stage to approach problems in a way that is focused on root causes or systems? Or have you tried using any of the tools mentioned above? Please share your experience with me!

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