Ally Initiatives

Partners in Harris County sought to reduce food insecurity in North Pasadena, Texas, a predominantly Hispanic, working-class suburb of Houston. They came together to create a community-supported food system to increase knowledge, demand, and availability of healthy food among the community. This is the logic model they used to show how their investments would lead to the desired impact.

“There is mounting recognition that to truly improve health outcomes in the U.S. and curb chronic diseases there must be an interdisciplinary, coordinated, and cross-sector approach to address acute conditions and the upstream social factors that contribute to poor health outcomes.” The Public Health Leadership Forum (PHLF) and Health Care Transformation Task Force (HCTTF) developed a framework that “outlines essential elements of collaboration and presents key tactics and strategies for forming or reshaping effective partnerships.”

“The National Alliance to impact the Social Determinants of Health (NASDOH) is a group of stakeholders working to systematically and pragmatically build a common understanding of the importance of addressing social needs as part of an overall approach to health improvement. [They] provide a bridge between sectoral efforts by engaging organizations across the national system of health and in particular, engaging the business sector to articulate the cross-sector value proposition for addressing the social determinants of health.”

“MAPP is a community-driven strategic planning process for improving community health. Facilitated by public health leaders, this framework helps communities apply strategic thinking to prioritize public health issues and identify resources to address them. MAPP is not an agency-focused assessment process; rather, it is an interactive process that can improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and ultimately the performance of local public health systems.”

“The Practical Playbook is a stepping stone in the next transformation of health, in which primary care and public health groups collaborate to achieve population health improvement and reduced health care costs. Like a sports playbook, the Practical Playbook defines the role of each team member as well as actions for different situations. Throughout each stage, the Practical Playbook provides helpful resources such as success stories from across the country, lessons-learned from existing partnerships, and further guidance from industry experts.”

This assessment is based on a few survey questions from the ASTHO Profile of State and Territorial Public Health, Vol. 4 “related to the nature of SHA [State Health Agency] collaborative activities, including how SHAs collaborate and with whom. Results indicate that SHAs are collaborating with many partners in their communities and across governmental sectors at the local, state, federal, and tribal levels, as well as with many non-governmental agencies such as hospitals, schools, faith communities, and businesses.”

“[The Public Health Innovation Playbook] is designed to help you undertake and succeed at your own and your organizations’ innovation journeys. It is a companion resource to support and maximize the success of innovation projects.”

“[LIIF] developed the Social Impact Calculator, a new tool that allows you to put a dollar value on the benefits of things like an affordable home, a great school or access to transit—as well as calculate a rate of social return.”

“Building Healthy Communities (BHC) is a 10 year, $1 billion comprehensive community initiative launched by The California Endowment in 2010 to advance statewide policy, change the narrative, and transform 14 of California’s communities devastated by health inequities into places where all people and neighborhoods thrive.”

“The Good Collaboration Toolkit is a set of materials aimed to help individuals collaborate well and build successful collaborations. Through a series of activities, participants will be asked to consider questions, dilemmas, and cases involved with all aspects of the collaboration, most especially the process of collaboration. …this Toolkit provides participants with an opportunity to work through exercises, as persons and in groups, which can be useful to the collaborative process.”