America's City for Health Workgroup

Introduction/Review 15 minutes

Re-grounding

Overview of past year – what is the need as defined by group
Purpose statement and principles defined in last meeting (December)
Charge as defined by DMC leadership (Kevin) – a framework/tool for guiding development and programming [THE WHY]
Reflections

 Investigation & Findings 20 minutes

Approach

Where did we start/who did we talk to?
Review of Models/approaches

Best fit = Health Impact Assessment (HIA)
Collective action/design studios
Review of existing Rochester/Olmsted County Infrastructure

Proposed Framework - Hybrid HIAA Model 10 minutes

Discuss/Design Workshop 40 minutes

Individual report outs (share) 10 minutes

Collectively discuss/debate 25 minutes

Conclude 5 minutes

We wanted to re-connect to let you know where things are at with the America’s City for Health effort, given you have all contributed so generously of your time. First as a primer, we have included several slides that capture the key decision points over our last 12 months together. At our last meeting in December, we identified a rough mission statement, identified guiding principles (such as building equity into community decision making processes) and started discussing possible opportunities for collaboration. Additionally, we discussed the importance of supporting and connecting existing resources and efforts, not creating additional ones and connecting directly with the Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) currently underway. Perhaps the most pertinent insight from our December meeting was to think about how these principles and activities can be integrated into the day-to-day priorities, activities and decision making occurring within and across the community.

This concept led us to look into models such as Health Impact Assessments, (HIAs) which “can be used to evaluate objectively the potential health effects of a project or policy before it is built or implemented” and “are similar in some ways to Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) that some of you may be familiar with. While the concept of HIAs aligns well with our visioning, the challenge is that they tend to be a bit cumbersome (especially for communities lacking resources), slow-moving, and top-down in their implementation. Our intent is to take the concept of the HIA and look at how we can integrate it more intimately with existing community efforts (such as the CHNA), community resources and policy/decision-making processes. We are looking to develop the tools and infrastructure for integrating proactive and collaborative community health concepts into decisions across policy, program and community development and do so in ways that are easily accessible, agile, action-oriented and replicable across the community.

At our next meeting (to be scheduled in late March) we will share (for feedback) a proposal that will outline recommendations on how we plan to facilitate this, including key partnerships, timelines, roles and possible projects for prototyping and piloting. 

Thanks and please let me know if you have any questions!

Kevin