Karen Ben-Moshe, Policy Program Officer, Blue Shield of California Foundation
Richard Vezina, Senior Program Officer, Blue Shield of California Foundation
Local public agencies are at a crossroads. Over the last few years, in response to racial justice protests and inequities made more visible by the Covid-19 pandemic, many local public agencies have worked to improve their engagement with low-income and underserved communities—especially communities of color. By adopting equity-centered approaches to community engagement, public agencies can better ensure their policies and programs lead to improvements for communities facing disproportionate health burdens.
But making these changes is challenging, and public agencies need support. Recently, Blue Shield of California Foundation engaged Onside Partners and ThinkForward Strategies to explore this issue and identify opportunities for change. Together, we developed a brief, “There’s a Better Way: Public Agencies Centering Equity in Community Engagement,” which shows what equity-centered engagement looks like and highlights opportunities for philanthropy to support this transformation.
Equity-centered community engagement matters for health
Health funders often organize our funding around specific health issues or populations. But focusing more broadly on the relationship between government and communities of color leads to wide-reaching improvements in health. Communities know their own needs and strengths best. So, engaging more deeply with them and aligning policy choices to their priorities on any number of issues—climate, housing, land use, access to care, or really any upstream driver of health—leads to better health outcomes in the long run.
Mindsets and bureaucracy can get in the way of equity-centered community engagement
Plenty of work in the field already describes effective equity-centered engagement (see example 1 and example 2 ). Our report explored what prevents agencies from adopting those practices and found two big barriers:
- Local public agency leaders do not always see community members as experts on their own needs, and fear of sharing or ceding power can make it difficult to consider and accept new approaches. But the commitment of agency leaders is essential because they have the formal decisionmaking authority needed to change systems and structures.
- Many local public agencies lack the infrastructure to employ equity-centered engagement strategies. For example, equity may not be explicitly reflected in agency goals and performance metrics, bureaucracy might get in the way of innovation, or staff training on equity-centered community engagement approaches might be lacking.
But these barriers can be overcome. Our brief shares success stories from local public health departments throughout California. Monterey County Health Department leadership spent years partnering with local nonprofits and funders to get the agency to a place where it could engage the community in a more intentional way. In rural Shasta County, the Health and Human Services Agency established a community organizing team that builds the capacity of agency staff to collaborate with the community and address community-identified problems.
Philanthropy can (and should) help the public sector
Philanthropy can help public agencies and their community partners build more effective relationships. Large public systems can be slow to change and tend to revert to the status quo. Agencies, even where changes are welcome, need support to overcome institutional barriers.
So where should philanthropy invest to drive this kind of change?
First, funders can help change narratives and mindsets within public systems. Government leaders may fear community input or see engagement as futile. Funders can invest in training for both government leaders and community advocates to foster a shared belief in the value of equity-centered approaches. Grantmakers can also highlight effective government practices and bold public sector leadership.
Second, funders can support pilot projects that encourage government innovation. This can include funding teams within agencies to lead engagement efforts or supporting nonprofits that provide civic education and build relationships between residents and agency staff.
Finally, grantmakers can fund research and evaluation on this kind of work. This can include the development and adoption of meaningful measures for successful equity-centered engagement. Evaluation efforts should assess the mid- and long-term impact of engagement efforts, acknowledging that such change will take time.
Community engagement is essential to aligning public systems with community priorities
This research is a part of Blue Shield of California Foundation’s program area called “Aligning Systems with Community Priorities.” Our goal is to make public systems more inclusive and responsive to the priorities of the communities they serve, especially communities of color with low incomes. We support organizations that advance racial equity and address the needs of communities disproportionately affected by health inequities and domestic violence. We know that grassroots leadership on these issues is necessary—and that movements are more successful when we also invest in making government more responsive to community priorities.
Within this portfolio, our team funds the Othering and Belonging Institute’s Blueprint for Belonging, which works with community partners and local governments to reshape public narratives in ways that promote inclusion and more equitable treatment of immigrant communities. We also fund State of Equity’s Capitol Collaborative on Race & Equity, which provides training to California state government agencies on community engagement and power sharing for racial equity. We are proud to support them and many others in driving change both locally and statewide.
We encourage other funders to support public agencies in adopting equity-centered approaches to community engagement and overcoming common barriers to change.