The Massachusetts Department of Public Health has announced the inaugural awards of the Massachusetts Community Health and Healthy Aging Funds. The Collaborative for Educational Services (CES) and 31 other organizations across Massachusetts and more than 35 of their community partners, including non-profit community-based organizations, municipalities, and regional planning commissions will share $14.7M in grant funding to implement strategies. All of these organizations have committed to leading efforts to address the root causes of health inequities by disrupting systemic barriers to health and tackling institutional and structural racism head-on. During the pandemic, the need to support such efforts is even more imperative.
The goal of the funds is to work with community partners to increase awareness and address the impact of structural racism on population health, and to create long-term, meaningful changes in population health outcomes, including mental health and chronic disease.
CES’s proposal, Redesigning Power Structures, will intervene at the level of governance or decision-making in institutions to craft more inclusive structures that welcome people most impacted by health inequities to be involved in governance decisions that directly affect their lives. Working in partnership with municipalities, agencies and community residents, the program will include grassroots leadership development as well as organizational transformation to work towards a shared power model.
“I am excited about this work because it will provide an opportunity to promote greater representation, voice, participation, and power for people who have traditionally been left out of decision-making processes that most impact their lives,” said Sarah Bankert, Program Manager for Healthy Hampshire, “Intervening at the level of governance directly addresses the power imbalance that contributes to inequities in our communities and offers an opportunity for creating “power-with” models of governance as opposed to “power-over” models which are predominant in our society.”
Heather Warner, SPIFFY Coalition Coordinator, notes that “today and historically, young people are standing up for racial justice, climate change, voting and other critical issues that impact their wellbeing and futures. Redesigning Power Structures values youth leadership and places youth and community resident leadership at the heart of planning and project development to address the social determinants of health, health equity, and structural racism. To do this successfully we will also be partnering with community boards, municipal leaders and other decision-makers to increase capacity to engage with and incorporate community members and youth involvement in policy-making.”
The Healthy Families and Communities team at the Collaborative for Educational Services will head up the Redesigning Power Structures work, in partnership with agencies, municipalities, and resident leaders in Hampshire County. For more information or to get involved, please contact Sarah Bankert at sbankert@collaborative.org or (413) 588-5581.