Dear Community Partners and Key Stakeholders,
June and July have been busy months for our CHIP process! June launched our Talk to Action community conversations for both Birth Outcomes & Infant Mortality and Mental Health at the YWCA. We are so grateful for and inspired by all of you who set aside an evening or more of your time to take part!
Our Talk to Action participants were engaged and the conversations were rich, providing a good foundation for moving forward. We are still sifting through and organizing all the input but soon will be able to share the meeting notes and outcomes publicly. Common themes across both focus conditions were engaging community, justice system and healthcare leaders to undo racism and promote equity and well-being at both the organizational and community-wide levels, with a strong focus on supporting youth and school-based initiatives.
We continue to meet with individuals with expertise on equity in birth outcomes and mental health, and factors that influence these conditions. We are working to build new connections with folks doing relevant community work, such as those working within the justice system to address racial inequities and increase support for those with mental health vulnerabilities.
Next steps for our CHIP process are sharing the stories and strategies that came out of the Talk 2 Actions with other groups and individuals who can help us further understand the context of this work in our community and continue to refine next steps. We will be gathering input from the CHIP Advisory Council at our August meeting, and with youth in the next few weeks. We are happy to continue reaching out to additional individuals and groups to get input and feedback over the coming months as new stakeholders are identified.
A draft of our Community Health Improvement Plan will be submitted to the NC Division of Public Health in September. It is important to underscore the word draft here. While we will submit a fairly detailed work plan, as we begin to convene individuals to take action and identify those in the community who can champion this community-led work, the CHIP plan almost certainly will evolve and change as we learn more from our community and each other.
Social Determinants continues to be an area of interest and learning across the community, the state and nationally. The CHIP team is revisiting our CHIP Advisory Council's work around a Social Determinants and Health Equity that we started several months ago and we hope to reconvene a small team fairly soon to continue developing our own language for what we mean when we say SDoH. In the meantime we encourage you to check out the resources on SDoH found on our CHIP blog Resource page. If you were not able to attend the recent Social Determinants of Health Conference at MAHEC in June (or just haven't downloaded the materials) you'll find a link here. The conference included a keynote by Dr. Betsy Tillis on the North Carolina Response to Social Determinants of Health. Presentation materials on the following topics were also made available: innovative strategies from communities across the country (Carrie Lee Carroll with the RWJF Culture of Health Prize at University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute), how local public health departments are addressing SDoH (Laurey Stradley, Alliance for a Healthier Generation) and a presentation from our CHIP team on our local journey to leverage collective impact to address SDoH. You can find these presentations on our Resource page under Social Determinants of Health heading.
Keep up-to-date on more timely information and partner updates on our Facebook page. You'll also find resources and learning opportunities on our blog pages as well as ways to support our partners and engage in advocacy. To share your info on our Blog and Facebook pages, send content to Terri at anytime.
In appreciation of all you do!
The CHIP Team!
