TC Duong, Program Officer, Blue Shield of California Foundation
Multisector collaborations epitomize the expression “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” Working together toward common goals, organizations from different sectors that listen and work directly with communities can multiply their impact compared to what they can accomplish working separately. Because of this, funders too can expand their impact by investing in and encouraging these multisector collaborations that serve as engines for lifting up community voices and promoting equity.
For example, the East San Jose PEACE Partnership is a multisector collaboration that includes an array of organizations representing local business, education, mental health, youth development, city and county government, health care, domestic violence service organizations, and neighborhood alliances. The partnership is supported by city-level pools of flexible funding from varied sources meant to address community needs.
The PEACE Partnership initially focused its collective power on community safety and policing. It later responded to East San Jose residents who identified an urgent need to address domestic violence as a health issue that is intertwined with the other barriers to good health in the community. Experiencing domestic violence as well as other kinds of violence and trauma over a long period of time results in poor health, contributing to health issues ranging from heart disease to substance abuse while also perpetuating poor economic conditions that make it even harder to break the generational cycle.
To address this community-identified need, the local collaborators created Promotores to Prevent Intimate Partner Violence, which trains residents to be ambassadors for healing in their communities. Collectively, they are also strengthening city supports to end domestic violence. The East San Jose work demonstrates how diverse collaborations can identify issues of local concern and then work together to improve factors outside of health care that influence health.
The flexible funding strategy used in East San Jose is one of 54 policy strategies identified in the Healthy Neighborhood Investments: A Policy Scan & Strategy Map, an evidence-based guide for organizations and communities looking to increase their impact through multisector collaboration. Blue Shield of California Foundation supported the Build Healthy Places Network and Shift Health Accelerator in developing the scan, which can help partnerships tailor effective policy strategies for supporting healthy neighborhoods that advance racial and health equity. Policies in the scan are clustered around themes of engaging and empowering people to make change, bringing lifestyles into harmony with nature, humane housing to support economic well-being, meaningful work and wealth, life-long learning, and reliable transportation.
Armed with the policy scan and its embedded tools for addressing social determinants of health, multisector collaborations can incorporate existing state and local government policies into their planning and advocate for new policies that will help them meet broad community goals.
Our work is most effective when we are centering community voices in shaping policy and investments. The scan demonstrates how funders can support positive health outcomes when they listen to communities and address issues not traditionally associated with health — like voter access, housing, and equitable education.
For example, in Imperial County, California, multisector partners—like health departments, hospitals, and grassroots leaders—are working to reduce asthma hospitalizations among children. This group is part of the California Accountable Communities for Health Initiative and built on an Accountable Health Community model, which is highlighted in the report as an example of how to improve health outcomes. Together, local advocates are addressing air quality, housing conditions, and other social determinants of health related to asthma, while also encouraging more consistent standards of care and access to care.
Other policy strategies for multi-sector collaborations include ideas such as advocating for city and county master plans or tax policies that address specific community health issues. These community-driven master plans can support health and community goals by ensuring residents have safe places to exercise, homes a healthy distance from freeways, and zoning that allows access to fresh produce venders. Having a multisector table for decisionmaking creates more paths to health and equity. Collaboratives serve as catalysts for localized approaches to policy and systems change. It is our role as funders to support these efforts—and those working to create even wider networks of multisector collaborations like the California Accountable Communities for Health Initiative.
By investing in community-driven collaboration that builds on collective strengths and serves as an engine for systemic change, we can indeed create outcomes that will be far greater and more impactful than any single organization could accomplish on its own.