Addressing Health Disparities Linked to Climate Issues

In April, I had the pleasure of facilitating the Alliance of Nurses for Health Environments (ANHE) two-day strategic planning retreat. The goal was to chart a path forward that incorporated equity into their work, and we conducted interviews with members of the nursing community who were familiar with ANHE to understand how ANHE could best do this …

How has Health Impact Assessment been used? Findings from a new study

Health is impacted by multiple factors outside the direct control of the public health and health care system, such as education, income, and the conditions in which people live, work, and play. Health impact assessment (HIA), provides a structured process for examining the potential health impacts of proposed policies, plans, programs, and projects. Conducting a …

May SparkNews: Transforming Health

All of the rapid change in the health landscape allows for exciting opportunities to engage stakeholders and, therefore, create solutions that are as equitable as they are innovative. However, engaging these voices effectively requires a commitment to the process to ensure they aren’t just token representation, and that their perspectives and lived experiences truly inform the process. This …

Better Outcomes through Engagement

Having come from a field where collaboration and stakeholder engagement is just starting to catch on, I am astounded by the level of cooperation underway in the health field here in Colorado and throughout the country. I joined Spark in February after helping lead Colorado’s largest “open source” policy development process in the form of …

Healthy Schools Collective Impact: Reaching the Bold Goal, Together

One of the things that has become clear in our work with systems change broadly and collective impact specifically is that no one program or organization can address large-scale issues on its own. Put another way, our impact goes further when we work together toward a common agenda. Over the past nine months, Spark has …

How to Build a Health Care Movement

What happens when 14 community organizations, two foundations and several communications experts come together to change how the public thinks about access to health care? You build a movement. Project Health Colorado (PHC) was a groundbreaking three-year Colorado Trust initiative to build public will for access to health. PHC involved 14 community organizations that used …

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