I spend a lot of time talking about the 12 Principles and show-casing our application tool. My next talk is as a webinar being hosted by the Root Cause Coalition on August 15th as part of their ‘how to’ series. Our webinar is on how to truly engage your community, and – most importantly – what it means for your organization. It’s free to participate and you can register from this link.
I’ll be joined by Dunia Faulx of Jefferson Healthcare, WA, whose work was described in our last post and Lori Peterson of Collaborative Consulting, CA.
One of the things that people want to know is where the Principles came from. The answer is from practitioners. My view is that we learn best by doing, rather than just thinking and studying. The 12 Principles are an amalgamation of what ‘doers’ have shared as fundamental tenets of their work.
One of the ways we got doers to share is by encouraging them to write. And one of the products of that effort is our eBook, Communities Creating Health. We’ve recently re-issued it with a new front cover. Published in association with Stanford Social Innovation Review, it’s the same content but with an updated look.
Don’t be fooled by the words ‘same content’. The lessons in the chapters are as resonant today as they were when the eBook was first published in late 2015. It’s US$6.87* well-spent. Here are some of the chapters:
- What Is Community Anyway? How agreeing an understanding of ‘community’ can help funders and evaluators identify, understand, and strengthen the communities they work with. By David M. Chavis & Kien Lee
- Giving Communities a Role to Play in Health. A local barber describes how when people have a real voice in the decisions affecting their lives and health, they thrive in ways beyond measure. By Tony Thomas
- Between Listening and Doing. The search for a “whole health” approach to improving access to food and food education. By Philip Sambol.
- Building Trust with Communities of Color. Some strategies for engaging communities of color in local health initiatives. By Nayeli Y. Chavez-Dueñas & Hector Y. Adames
- Connecting Big-Picture Theories with Community Experience. A social worker shares her experience of blending practices and theory to improve health outcomes outside the clinical setting. By Nancy Knopf
- Emerging Tools for Community-Driven Evaluations. Eight tools for building inclusive, community programs to address health and other social issues. By Deepthi Welaratna
- Health Services and Designing for Uncertainty. How a “lean startup” approach can help create an effective community-based program. By Onil Bhattacharyya, Leigh Hayden, & Jennifer Hensel
- Cultivating and Sustaining Generative Teams. Four practices that can help people establish common intent; sense emerging needs and solutions; and collectively prototype, create, and evolve innovative heath models and relationships. By Margaret A. Hawthorne
- Undercover Solutions. A local economist shares how solutions to social problems are often hidden in the most obvious places, masquerading as problems. By Meghan Williamson
- Operating When You Can’t See the Full Picture. Three principles for solving complex, systemic problems like improving community health. By Jeff Cohen
- The Promise and Peril of Community Evaluation. Four ways to improve community evaluation so that it helps build, rather than erode, social progress. By Kimberley Sims
- How Evaluation Can Strengthen Communities. How including community members in decisions about evaluation can improve the community’s capacity to effectively manage and control change. By Kien Lee & David M. Chavis
- Investing in Community-Led Health. The case for investing in the long-term health and well-being of communities, based on what those communities value. By Ollie Smith
- Making the Money Work. How funders can best support place-based initiatives. Anthony B. Iton
- Tomorrow’s Health Relies on New Relationships. How imagining a healthier future starts with developing a shared view of what a healthier life could be. By Prabhjot Singh
- Time to Return to the Whole. How finding a new narrative that embraces the whole, rather than the parts, is key to building health-creating systems. By Jamie Harvie
- And there’s a Foreword by Sir Harry Burns, the Former Chief Medical Officer of Scotland
Hilariously, it has a glowing review on Amazon but the reviewer accidentally (I assume) gave it one star (five being the highest). Anyway, part of the review reads:
“I found reading the articles in Communities Creating Health helped me better understand how communities are working to improve health. It is challenging and complex work and I would highly recommend reading this book to gain insight and ideas.”
Perhaps if you like the book you can add a review with a different star rating to help it reach a wider audience.
* Amazon uses dynamic pricing so the price may be different when you look – and of course the price in non-US Amazon stores varies according to currency
