Better Health Together supports housing-first approaches to solving homelessness. We understand that safe and affordable shelter is fundamental to achieving health equity. The Housing First approach prioritizes establishing access to decent, safe, and permanent housing for people experiencing homelessness to ensure the needed stability for improving health. Review the literature supporting this approach to learn more!
Read MoreIn 2021, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) allocated Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) dollars to cities to provide housing and utility assistance to citizens financially impacted by COVID. As we conclude this work and step back to view the larger picture, we can see how essential these supports are in times of crisis to impacted populations.
Read MoreWe are releasing $1 million of our Community Resiliency Fund in a Request For Proposal process to address racism. We will prioritize awarding dollars to organizations led by and serving Black, Indigenous, and people of color.
Read MoreDRAFT - Work in progress
After a summer of focus groups, we are thrilled to release an updated draft of our Community Action Strategies Map! Thank you to all who contributed feedback in one of our sessions.
A reminded this document is very much in draft form. We intend for these maps to be a living document, that we regularly return to and update as needs and priorities change. Today, this map represents a snapshot of the most prominent themes we heard throughout the focus groups.
There are many factors that lead to whole-person health and most of those factors happen outside of a doctor’s office. We have identified 6 target factors in the Social Determinants of Health: Housing, Income Stability, Food, Transportation, Education, and Community Support
Originally, the ACH Leadership Council, Social Determinants Subgroup worked on the strategy mapping for these 6 areas collectively, but it was very apparent that we needed a more systematic approach where we could engage the regional experts in targeted discussion. In August, ACH staff and SDOH workgroup co-chair Pam Tietz participated in a Results Based Accountability training hosted by THEZONEPROJECT, which presented a fortuitous opportunity to reform the workgroup into targeted community "turn-the-curve" work sessions. We split the 6 social determinants into separate work groups and asked Leadership Council members to invite any pertinent individuals or organizations to join the meeting. Our goal is to engage as many people and organizations as possible for feedback and input.
Greg Knight, the Executive Director of Rural Resources and BHT Board member co-chair of this group helped coordinated outreach sessions in rural counties. Individual outreach is still being conducted for additional organizations, and the strategy map will continue to expand.
Through these workgroups, the group identified over 160 key partners and organizations that should be included in this work.
To date, the ACH Project Team has engaged with over 65 individuals in various work groups and outreach.
The Community Action Team for Social Determinants has broken into smaller workgroups around the goal areas below. Currently, we are using the Results Based Accountability (RBA) method of Turn-the-Curve thinking, to identify strategies and performance measures that address the root problems causing some of our communities' most widespread health issues. These open meetings are paired with targeted outreach by BHT ACH Staff to key movers-and-shakers of social programs and public forums requesting feedback. Once developed, all strategies will be made available on this site for public review. Please consider joining us at one of our upcoming meetings:
All are invited to join these meetings, hosted at the Philanthropy Center (1020 W Riverside, Spokane WA 99201). We welcome anyone to join us at any step in the process, but please do email justin@betterhealthtogether.org to let us know you'll be joining. We discuss current and needed work in our region, and develop strategy to radically improve community health.
Strategy Map – Community Determinants of Health
