What is your coalition’s UNIQUE value add?
What’s your coalition’s unique value add in your community?
Here at PoP Health, we’ve been thinking a lot about why coalitions sometimes feel stuck in neutral (and the key to shifting gears).
Our five steps to strengthen coalition foundations - the Coalition Core 5 - begins with shared clarity around why you exist as a coalition. More specifically, what is your coalition’s unique value add in your community.
Why most coalitions feel stuck in neutral (and the key to shifting gears)
For the last few months, we’ve been talking about how public health isn’t actually a systems business. It’s a people business.
In a world of bots, be a HUMAN - it’s key to your coalition’s success
As we’re highlighting through this series, public health is, at its core, a people business.
So, naturally, one key piece of advice for health coalition leaders to keep in mind: Be a human.
In an era of artificial intelligence and soulless corporations, there’s something to be said for simply being human.
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.