What’s New for Healthy Mendocino: New Structure and Process

Who is Healthy Mendocino as we move into a new Community Health Improvement Plan Cycle?

Healthy Mendocino exists to improve the long-term health and well-being of Mendocino County by tackling root causes of health and quality of life issues and engendering deep cross-sector collaboration.

Healthy Mendocino will now be the backbone organization in the collective impact framework. As the backbone organization, we hold the overarching vision, identify gaps and overlaps, hold community conversations and support our partners in external communication. We work with our partners to create shared measurements of success and action steps.

Healthy Mendocino’s Achievements and New Direction

In the last Community Health Need Assessment (CHNA)/CHIP cycle of 2016-2019, Healthy Mendocino convened cross-sector and multidisciplinary Action Teams around the five priority areas that arose from the 2016 CHNA data and community input. These Action Teams focused on Childhood Obesity & Family Wellness, Childhood Trauma, Housing, Mental Health, and Poverty. With the help of staff, the teams identified their own projects and set of goals. The groups had successes in identifying gaps in the community, igniting necessary conversations around health equity, influencing housing policy, and providing some very worthy community educational and outreach opportunities to help shift social norms. In addition, the teams were able to identify community assets, national and state trends affecting their work and identify some key areas for action or potential action for the next cycle of work.

While individual organizations within the Action Teams have had victories in telling their stories, the last cycle proved it was difficult to create an interwoven narrative that generates a community-wide campaign towards changing social norms and establishing a community of health.  In relationship to the socio-ecological model, community efforts have been predominately in the individual, interpersonal and organizational levels. In addition, there are sectors that have been missing from the table.

Healthy Mendocino held many brainstorming meetings with the Healthy Mendocino Steering Committee and researched national and international approaches to community health improvement efforts. We found that successful backbone organizations operate under the following principles: center the scope of work around a narrow focus, weave together and enhance what is already being done, hold the bigger picture and vision, use equity as a lens, plant seeds for long-term change, be accountable to the community, and communicate externally to celebrate partners’ successes.

Going forward, efforts will be centered around initiatives that address the upstream causes of the new priority areas identified in the 2019 CHNA - Mental Health, Domestic Abuse (including sexual and child abuse) and Substance Abuse (including drugs, opioids and alcohol). We believe this is the best way to focus on organizational, community and policy/systems level change and effectively engage community partners across sectors. Amplifying existing programs through policy, communication, coordination and key products, these initiatives will provide a strategic plan to address gaps and engage the community. Any product that is identified in the initiative serves to help partners be more effective, rather than add to their workload. In addition, building our scope of work around a specific initiative will allow us to go deep, rather than wide, which in turn increases the chance of meeting our goals.

We need to have a range of measurements that track early changes but may not necessarily be reflected in a population level indicator (e.g. monitor increase in vegetable consumption as opposed to decrease in obesity) and ways to measure our progress at different scales that define success according to our partners while reflecting the levels of the socioecological model and the continuum of change.

Small, time-bound work groups will be formed to implement each pocket of work in the initiatives. Healthy Mendocino believes this transition away from the larger, ongoing Action Team structure will allow us to have the appropriate talent at the table for each project and will keep morale up among our hard-working community leaders.

Our New Structure

Instead of a Steering Committee we will now have an Advisory Council (AC) made up of agency heads, sector representatives, and community members which will meet quarterly. This body of decision-makers will provide staff with critical strategic perspectives and feedback during the implementation of the initiatives. A Leadership Team will meet more frequently to help with the initiative process and organization oversight. Initiative Expertise Panel members will represent sector initiative expertise needed to plan and identify necessary progress measurements and will include community members with lived experience. Work Groups will work on time-bound, project specific action steps.

The new Healthy Mendocino Advisory Council met on November 4th. They were given an overview of our Guiding Principles, a synopsis of the 2019 CHNA process and final report, a summary of the new structure and Action Plan and a presentation of three Initiatives. Those initiatives were: 1) Housing: Healthy Communities Start at Home, 2) Workforce Development: Promoting Pathways for Progress: Cultivating a skilled workforce, 3) Improving Mental Health: Mendo Thrives: Building Community Muscle. After a discussion the Council voted on the Workforce Development Initiative to implement as part of the 2019 Community Health Improvement Plan (CHIP) process. The Improving Mental Health came in second. Click HERE to read a report on each initiative. We will be preparing and laying the groundwork on the Mental Health Initiative starting in July.

Promoting Pathways to Progress—a workforce and economic promotion initiative

As a county we have had success in developing certification and educational degrees and pathways to recruit, educate and employ within our local communities. We have multiple agencies and collaborations working in this arena with long-standing relationships and victorious outcomes. However, in our community listening tours and key leader interviews we continue to hear of the need for more efforts to promote existing pathways and additional pathway opportunities from high school to graduate school.  This initiative aims to support the work already being done and help fill gaps in the following ways:

• Create a map that serves to outline, enhance, communicate and support 4-5 key steppingstone pathways for ongoing professional and educational development 
• Identify gaps in training and education 
• Work with outlying communities to identify solutions, particularly solutions where technology can contribute
• Identify funding opportunities to support identified solutions 
• Communicate and celebrate the programs that create a stronger workforce. Highlight existing opportunities
• Communicate the needs of employers and how addressing those needs will positively impact the health and strength of our community
• Through our partners who do direct youth service, better identify barriers for our youth to societal engagement and gainful employment
• Explore ways to create more professional community connections

The full initiative can be read HERE if you would like more details on background and the specific strategies and goals.

Staff is very excited about this new direction and we are hitting the ground running. We are currently in the pre-mapping phase for the Workforce Initiative and holding preliminary conversations with key players.

If you would like more information on this initiative or to get involved please contact us at healthymendocino@ncoinc.org.

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Patrice Mascolo, M.S. is the Program Manager for Healthy Mendocino. She has a master’s degree in molecular biology and enjoys working outside the science arena in the nonprofit sector creating collaborations and connections. She previously worked at Plowshares Peace and Justice Center.

Julie Fetherston, M.S. is the Inland Action Team Coordinator for Healthy Mendocino. Julie facilitates opportunities for individuals, organizations to engage in creating new communities through information, communication and connection. Her academic background is in Psychology and Ecology which informs her wholistic perspective. She has twenty years of experience in strategic analysis and program development.

Molly Rosenthal is the North Coast Action Team Coordinator for Healthy Mendocino. She has a BA in Journalism from San Francisco State University and has worked in legal services, volunteer management and non-profit development.