Resource Library
Discover Innovative Community Action Initiatives at Community Action Showcase!
The Center of Excellence is a national training hub, engaging Community Action Agencies coast-to-coast to share innovative, high impact strategies. This platform shines a light on Community Action success stories to inspire. Here you can access resources to strengthen services, build community outcomes, and create family and community change in your local area.
Racism and Health Equity in Community Action
This webinar explores the intersections of poverty, health and racism in America. The webinar introduces the Community Action Network to the American Public Health Association’s six-part webinar series, Advancing Racial Equity, which explores racism as driving force for the social determinants of health.
Food as Medicine – Partnering to Improve Food Security and Health Outcomes among Vulnerable Populations
A county without poverty – thriving, resilient, and prosperous communities for ALL. This is what ALL IN envisions in its efforts to eradicate poverty in Alameda County, California. Through collaboration across a variety of partnerships and innovation, ALL IN seeks to ensure that all families are able to:
– Meet their basic needs for food, shelter, healthcare, and safety
– Earn an income that allows for self-sufficiency and asset building
– Obtain a quality education that positions the next generation for academic and economic success
Since 2014, ALL IN has launched strategies addressing school readiness and food security (food recovery and food as medicine), zeroing in on implementing these strategies at the neighborhood level to ensure that they are reflective and responsive of the community’s needs.
Why Should Nurses Know About Social Determinants of Health?
Nurses have the ability to address social determinants of health in patients and refer those with health barriers to resources. Doing so can have a long-term impact on patient health.
Dotte Agency: A Participatory Design Model for Community Health
As community activists resist racial injustice, food insecurity, and infrastructural delinquency, many groups are attempting to articulate the voice of the citizen. It is within this landscape that architects have historically struggled to find common ground to afford democratic access for citizens to engage in discussions about the future of their city. Based upon surrogate models of other professions, there has emerged a proactive movement towards Social Impact Design. Like many urban core areas, our community faces a health epidemic compounded by poverty. In response to requests for collaboration, and through cross-disciplinary academic partnerships in both public health and social welfare, we have begun to leverage design advocacy to improve health outcomes. This has evolved into an alternative model of practice that advances public design through interdisciplinary, adaptive and incremental spatial agency. It is a sustainable practice that fosters conversations and supports events originating from within the community. Our approach seeks to scaffold an infrastructure of public health through methods of participatory design and advocacy. Through new forms of design intelligence and collaborative design tools, our critical spatial practice demonstrates new ways for how architectural design can be relevant to society.
What Works: Strategies to Improve Rural Health
The County Health Rankings & Roadmaps program helps communities identify and implement solutions that make it easier for people to be healthy in their neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces. Ranking the health of nearly every county in the nation, the County Health Rankings illustrate what we know when it comes to what is keeping people healthy or making people sick. The Roadmaps show what we can do to create healthier places to live, learn, work, and play. The 2016 Rankings include an in-depth examination of the differences in health between rural and urban counties.
Scaling Up, Scaling Out: Lessons from Goodwill of Central and Southern Indiana and Nurse-Family Partnership
This article examines the challenges of individual programs working together to scale. The goal of the collaboration described is for each service provider to reach additional families with unique services (horizontal scale) while also scaling across programs to ensure that a wider array of services are easily accessible for the family.
Achieving Rural Health Equity and Well-Being: Proceedings of a Workshop
This Proceedings of a Workshop synthesizes the discussions held at the workshop, highlights the speakers’ perspectives on rural health equity and well-being, and provides an overview of showcased initiatives and approaches to meeting the particular challenges and opportunities in improving health in rural communities.
Social Determinants of Health 101 for Health Care: Five plus Five
This paper considers what is known and what can be learned about SDoH to achieve the national quality strategy of better care, healthy people/healthy communities, and affordable care.
Partnerships for Health: Lessons for Bridging Community-Based Organizations and Health Care Organizations
This brief examines the strategic, operational, and financial approaches that drive the success of Health Care Organizations and Community Based Organizations partnerships. It also offers recommendations to guide the development of successful collaborations between health care and social service organizations.
Screening for Social Determinants of Health in Populations with Complex Needs: Implementation Considerations
This brief examines how organizations participating in Transforming Complex Care (TCC), a multi-site national initiative funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, are assessing and addressing SDOH for populations with complex needs.
Promoting Health Equity: A Resource to Help Communities Address Social Determinants of Health
This workbook was created to encourage and support the development of new and the expansion of existing, initiatives and partnerships to address the social determinants of health inequities.
What Is Health Equity? And What Difference Does a Definition Make?
This brief from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and University of California San Francisco was released to stimulate discussion and promote greater consensus about the meaning of health equity and the implications for action within the Culture of Health Action Framework.
Race Matters: How to Talk Effectively About Race
In a nutshell, to engage in an effective conversation about race, Dr Hardy recommends adequate preparation plus taking on a few tasks which vary according to whether your role is that of privilege or subjugator.
Social Determinants of Health: How are Hospitals and Health Systems Investing in and Addressing Social Needs?
The Deloitte Center for Health Solutions conducted a nationally representative online survey of about 300 hospitals and health systems to identify their current health-related social needs activities and investments and their potential future efforts.