Summary

HIP’s 2020-2024 Strategic Plan outlines a new clarity around our mission, vision, values, theory of change, and the impacts we want to have in the world. We will use it as our guiding star over the next 5 years, as we chart the course for the next phase in our organizational journey. 

Though this plan was formed and finalized in the months before the pandemic altered our reality, and before the people’s movement to end policing and state violence echoed across the nation, the pages that follow and our commitment to this vision is only renewed with greater urgency. This moment has brought into stark relief what we know well: so long as our systems deny well-being to some, all of our well-being is at risk. As directly impacted communities are naming and working towards solutions, we know our role in public health is to act on them. 

This strategic plan is our crystallization of that imperative. It’s us considering our work with fresh eyes, to articulate anew the why of HIP. And as always, it’s the result of deep and intentional collaboration, shaped through many long, thoughtful, and sometimes challenging discussions among HIP staff and board, informed by the input of our beloved community organizing partners, public health colleagues, health equity fellows, research collaborators, and funders. 

The strategic plan includes:

• A new mission statement that better captures the core purpose of HIP 
• A transformative vision statement that inspires our work
• Updated values that reflect our evolution as an organization
• An explicit theory of change that explains the analysis underlying our strategies
• New impact areas that describe the change we seek across all our programs
• Proposed growth areas to learn and take new risks in service to our mission 

We aren’t committing to a major pivot in our areas of focus. Instead, through internal analysis and external stakeholder interviews, we’ve come to believe that our strategies are still the right ones to advance our mission. And as the acute need for transformative public health grounded in equity has taken center stage in the past several months, our confidence in this vision is ever strengthened.

Getting through our compounding crises and re-imagining our future will take creativity, courage, and a willingness to part with what is known, and all the grit, determination, and fight in us. It will take us working outside of our lanes, comfort zones, and traditional training and funding constraints. It will take us working in deep partnership with one another. We are here for this and we are ready. 

We believe that this strategic plan provides insight not only into our work, but into our hearts — and we share it with the sincere hope that you will be inspired to join us.