Dear Community Partners and Key Stakeholders,
Social Determinants of Health is something you increasingly hear discussed in many and diverse spaces. However, as this term is used more frequently it becomes clear that not everyone is using it the same way. Case in point, earlier this week I shared an article from Health Affairs on our CHIP Facebook page that stressed the need to distinguish between "social needs" and "social determinants of health". It is challenging to work across organizations and disciplines if we don't have a shared understanding and aren't speaking the same language and shared language is a core element of the framework that we used to help guide our CHIP work. In February our CHIP Advisory will beginning addressing this challenge by ensuring common definition of Social Determinants of Health. We'll also looking at what our Advisory and our partners need to better understand SDoH, know how to talk about it with leaders and stakeholders and identify ways to begin more effectively addressing those social and economic factors that strongly influence health. For those of you on CHIP Advisory we encourage you to take a few moments to read the Health Affairs article referenced above. We've also added this article to our CHIP Resources page for easy access in the future.
You'll also find the link to a new documentary from Health Leads entitled What Counts. Health Leads is promoting this documentary as a tool to foster conversation in health care communities around social determinants and they are hosting an online documentary screening and discussion of the film on Thursday, February 7th. We have a reserved a room a MAHEC if some of you would like to view it together and follow with some of our own conversation. Of course you can view the documentary and/or participate in the screening and discussion at your own computer. You'll find the details on our CHIP Learn Page.
Collective Impact is also something being discussed a great deal in our community that is not necessarily well-understood. CHIP has aspired to be a collective impact process although our approach has been less than perfect. (the "field" is evolving and there is still much to be learned. This year CHIP MAHEC and Buncombe HHS staff will participate in a learning cohort led by the Center for Non-profit Management based in Nashville, Tennessee. We will be sharing resources and our learning with you as well as using this opportunity to help us more effectively guide our CHIP process so that the amazing work across our community is better aligned for success. Again, check out our Resources Page.
Prior to attending our first Learning Cohort session in Nashville, Our MAHEC/Buncombe Co HHS team took a survey to assess how we are doing as a "collective impact process" as both a way to inform our learning but also as a tool to help us evaluate our process moving forward. You're perspective in this assessment would be valuable and we would like to invite you to take this same survey. Please let us know if you have any difficulty accessing the survey tool
In closing, we are extremely excited to introduce Hannah Legerton who we welcomed as our new Health Improvement Specialist on January 23rd. Hannah has masters degrees in both social work and public health with extensive experience working in the fields of maternal child health and on social justice issues. Some of you may know Hannah from 2014 when she interned with the CHIP team at Buncombe County HHS. She is also an Asheville native. We'll have her bio posted on our CHIP Staff page in the next few days.
Social Determinants of Health is something you increasingly hear discussed in many and diverse spaces. However, as this term is used more frequently it becomes clear that not everyone is using it the same way. Case in point, earlier this week I shared an article from Health Affairs on our CHIP Facebook page that stressed the need to distinguish between "social needs" and "social determinants of health". It is challenging to work across organizations and disciplines if we don't have a shared understanding and aren't speaking the same language and shared language is a core element of the framework that we used to help guide our CHIP work. In February our CHIP Advisory will beginning addressing this challenge by ensuring common definition of Social Determinants of Health. We'll also looking at what our Advisory and our partners need to better understand SDoH, know how to talk about it with leaders and stakeholders and identify ways to begin more effectively addressing those social and economic factors that strongly influence health. For those of you on CHIP Advisory we encourage you to take a few moments to read the Health Affairs article referenced above. We've also added this article to our CHIP Resources page for easy access in the future.
You'll also find the link to a new documentary from Health Leads entitled What Counts. Health Leads is promoting this documentary as a tool to foster conversation in health care communities around social determinants and they are hosting an online documentary screening and discussion of the film on Thursday, February 7th. We have a reserved a room a MAHEC if some of you would like to view it together and follow with some of our own conversation. Of course you can view the documentary and/or participate in the screening and discussion at your own computer. You'll find the details on our CHIP Learn Page.
Collective Impact is also something being discussed a great deal in our community that is not necessarily well-understood. CHIP has aspired to be a collective impact process although our approach has been less than perfect. (the "field" is evolving and there is still much to be learned. This year CHIP MAHEC and Buncombe HHS staff will participate in a learning cohort led by the Center for Non-profit Management based in Nashville, Tennessee. We will be sharing resources and our learning with you as well as using this opportunity to help us more effectively guide our CHIP process so that the amazing work across our community is better aligned for success. Again, check out our Resources Page.
Prior to attending our first Learning Cohort session in Nashville, Our MAHEC/Buncombe Co HHS team took a survey to assess how we are doing as a "collective impact process" as both a way to inform our learning but also as a tool to help us evaluate our process moving forward. You're perspective in this assessment would be valuable and we would like to invite you to take this same survey. Please let us know if you have any difficulty accessing the survey tool
In closing, we are extremely excited to introduce Hannah Legerton who we welcomed as our new Health Improvement Specialist on January 23rd. Hannah has masters degrees in both social work and public health with extensive experience working in the fields of maternal child health and on social justice issues. Some of you may know Hannah from 2014 when she interned with the CHIP team at Buncombe County HHS. She is also an Asheville native. We'll have her bio posted on our CHIP Staff page in the next few days.
In the meantime, our existing work around Birth Outcomes and Diabetes continues. Maggie Adams and Cindy Williams with Mothering Asheville shared a wonderful update on their work at our last CHIP Advisory. You can click here to view the slides from that presentation as well as a short video clip that talks about the work of Mothering Asheville.
We are in the middle of a roller coaster winter and our January Diabetes New Year meeting needed to be postponed due to the recent "polar vortex" event. This group will now be meeting on February 12. For more information about that meeting contact Nicole Vertel. And you can follow updates for this group on our Diabetes Page.
Food Security partners reconvened their larger workgroup in mid-January with a great group of participants. Look for updates to this work at our Food Security Page in a couple of weeks.
In appreciation of all you do!
The CHIP Team!
