Power-building Partnerships for Health Cohorts

Since 2018, we’ve convened 5 Power-building Partnerships for Health (PPH) cohorts, and provided in-depth Technical Assistance to an additional PPH collaboration. PPH has helped health departments and community power-building organizations develop a deeper understanding of each other’s field, theory of change, and power.

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Our Cohorts

  • Jackson, Mississippi: People’s Advocacy Institute (PAI) with University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC)
    • PAI is a transformative justice hub rooted in Jackson that organizes survivors and families impacted by police violence and mass incarceration. UMMC brings clinical capacity and broader health infrastructure as Mississippi’s only academic medical center. Together, they launched the Mississippi Violence Intervention Program – embedding trained violence interrupters and wraparound supports in UMMC’s emergency room to link community-led transformative justice with frontline trauma care.
  • Vermont: Community Resilience Organizations (CROs) and The Center for Story & Strategy with Vermont Department of Health – Office of Health Equity Integration (OHEI)
    • Emerging after Hurricane Ida with CDC Health Disparities funding, this partnership weaves state public health infrastructure with racial and climate grassroots organizers. CROs now serve as fiscal sponsors and collaborators, helping remove structural barriers for grassroots groups, while working with the VDH to explore how practices of community care and accountability can be aligned with state government.
  • Washington State: Carceral Health Equity (CHE) Workgroup with the Washington State Department of Health
    • The CHE Workgroup brings together a coalition of currently and formerly incarcerated leaders representing Common Good Tacoma, Northwest Community Bail Fund, Washington Innocence Project, Black Prisoners Caucus and other organizations. The CHE Workgroup works with the Washington State Department of Health to address the health harms of incarceration. Since 2023, the partnership has centered the lived experiences of those most impacted by the criminal legal system and has already influenced prison air quality guidance, mental health crisis response planning, and legislative health impact reviews.
  • Seattle & King County, Washington: Health Equity and Anti-Racism Community Advisory Group (HEARCAG) with Public Health – Seattle & King County
    • HEARCAG is a multi-sector table centering Black, Indigenous, and people of color communities, working at the interconnected crises of health and racism. HEARCAG members represent organizations including the Community Health Board Coalition, Eastside Pathways, Coalition of Immigrants Refugees and Communities of Color, and the Tubman Center for Health & Freedom. HEARCAG works with Public Health – Seattle & King County to shift power to community organizations through co-governance and community-driven policy priorities including divesting from criminal legal harms while investing in health, community development, gender-affirming and reproductive care, and dignified food access.

Due to COVID, HIP pivoted to work with the Public Health Alliance of Southern California to support Santa Barbara County Public Health Department and their community partners CAUSE and MICOP’s work to protect farmworker health and safety during COVID-19.  The partnership supported:

  • Development of Latinx and Indigenous Migrant COVID-19 Task Force
  • Documentation of community conditions impacting COVID-19 risk
  • A Health Order on H2A housing to require COVID-19 control measures in temporary agricultural worker housing and homeless shelters
  • Increased attention to Indigenous workers’ COVID-19 risks and language needs in communications and outreach.

Bridges Over Troubled Water: Assessing the national bridging landscape of partnerships between health departments and community power-building organizations

This report is an assessment of the national landscape of bridging partnerships – collaborations between governmental public health departments and community power-building organizations.

Bridges Over Troubled Water: Assessing the national bridging landscape of partnerships between health departments and community power-building organizations

Providence Case Story: Turning the Tide in Providence

How long-term community organizing against polluting industry in the Port of Providence is building the infrastructure for co-governance and making progress towards climate justice.

Providence Case Story: Turning the Tide in Providence

Kane County Case Story: The Power to Heal

How parent leaders and public health officials partnered and applied an inside-outside strategy to expand mental health support, launch peer-to-peer support programs, and advocate for systemic changes in Kane County, Illinois.

Kane County Case Story: The Power to Heal