Hearing vs. Listening to community

You want to transform health in your community. And you recognize that can’t be done without communities in the center and in the lead.

But how do we actually DO that?

We’ve talked about meeting community where they literally, physically are and these strategies are great to hear what they have to say, but today, I want to push us a little further. Because there is a HUGE difference between hearing and truly listening.

Merriam-Webster defines hearing as “the process, function, or power of perceiving sound, specifically: the special sense by which noises and tones are received as stimuli”.

On the other hand, the definition of listening reads, “to pay attention to sound; to hear something with thoughtful attention: give consideration”.

There’s a lot of lip service being paid to community voice these days, as well as genuine efforts to elevate community voice. But either way, community voice isn’t enough if we merely hear it, but don’t listen to and act on it.

The “act on it” piece is vital - I’d take the definition of “listening” and argue for us to take it one step further than paying thoughtful attention and giving consideration to actually internalizing and acting on what community has to say.

I’ve had the pleasure of working with the Allegheny County infant health equity coalition over the last couple years, and we’ve been incredibly intentional about trying to do this. What does this look like in practice?

• The coalition is composed of moms, doulas and other birth workers, nutrition advocates, community leaders, as well as nonprofit, healthcare, and government leaders;

• We used strategies like focus groups in a box that put community members and leaders in the driver’s seat of leading discussions with community members;

• As we continue to gather community input (as we just did a couple months ago during a community kick off event for implementation of the action plan), we reflect back what we’re hearing to community in ways that are easily digestible (you can see our summary of input from the kick off here);

• We directly link the input we receive through these strategies to our action, implementation, and learning/evaluation plans and we make these connections explicit (for example, you’ll see we quoted community members directly throughout our action plan to demonstrate the connections between what we heard from community and what ended up in the action plan);

• We’ll be capturing community feedback in learning and evaluation activities that directly ask them whether they felt listened to and their input acted upon - and we’ll modify our approach to reflect what we learn.

How are you and your coalitions/organizations working to go beyond hearing from community members to actually listening to them? Drop me a line and let me know!

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How to meet community where they (literally) are

One of my favorite parts of my work with community coalitions and collaboratives is working with them to meet the community where they are.

As a recovering academic, let me tell you why communities don’t trust academics and researchers - even when academics are trying to get community input, the typical model is that they bring folks together in a new space where the researcher has all the power and then ask community members to answer a bunch of questions to serve their own research needs and then the community never hears from them again.

Harsh, right?

I’m not trying to throw academics under the bus, I used to be right there with them, and their hearts are often in the right place. But we’re generally not trained in academia to share power with community members and meet them where they are.

You know who does that well? Community coalitions and collaboratives!

Working hand in hand with these groups over the last several years, here are some of my favorite strategies we’ve employed to meet community members where they are:

• Listen where community is already gathering. I’m part of a coalition where I live in Fairfax, Virginia, and last year, we launched our very first community-wide event called Healthy Together Fairfax. We knew we wanted this to be an event by the community, for the community, so we started by…listening. Just listening. Sounds simple, but it’s a step many skip! We knew there were dozens of community groups already gathering regularly to talk about health, so we simply reached out to them, attended meetings, and listened. We took notes, drew out key themes from what we were hearing, and let those themes drive the planning process.

• Focus the conversation through Focus Groups in a Box. In the first phase of my work with the Allegheny County Infant Health Equity Coalition, our top priority was crafting a community-driven action plan. The Coalition awarded small research grants to community partners that were already gathering places for community members, so that they could lead their own focus groups. I helped develop a standard focus group guide and reporting template that was then shared with these partners, and they shared back insights gathered through the conversations they led to inform the development of the plan. This is an approach that 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.

• Widen your reach with Street Stalls. There’s a problem with the two approaches I just shared - there’s a certain type of community member that’s already part of existing groups and community organizations. There’s another type - actually many types - of community members that aren’t part of those groups. 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). We used this approach last year to gather input to inform the Children’s Behavioral Health Blueprint led by Healthy Minds Fairfax. I designed and set up a tri-fold poster board (don’t underestimate the low-tech options!) with various categories of resources and had teens/children use green dots and caregivers/parents use pink dots to vote on the community resources they find most helpful. Another section the board had an open-ended question about what they’d most like to add/change in their community to support children’s mental health, with blank post-it-notes and markers available for passers-by to add their responses. End result: 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.

These strategies are great to meet community where they literally, physically are and hear what they have to say. But there is a difference between hearing and truly listening - find that in our next post!

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