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:
The difference between cynicism and skepticism
Are you a pessimist or an optimist?
I’m optimistic (almost to a fault, my husband would tell you).
But…I’m also pretty skeptical.
"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?
HOW to collaborate across your collaborative: What we can learn from Underpants Gnomes and other tips, strategies, and resources
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.”
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
Too many partners, too little time, one nifty tool
Public health problems live at the intersection of many different sectors and issues.
You can’t help kids in schools do and feel better without also making sure their teachers are well, that school policies don’t kick them out of class, that their communities are safe, and so on.
So any community health improvement effort worth its salt is going to involve multiple components led by multiple partners.