Article

Our nation’s colleges and universities are being asked to play demanding roles in creating the capacity for active and engaged collaboration and collective action to address complex challenges that are shaping the world we live in. An essential ingredient of any effort to build healthy communities for any purpose, including education, is the cultivation of equity and inclusion. In this article, we discuss what these terms mean in practice and how to draw upon the talents and experiences of all the members of a diverse community in order to understand and address the pressing social, cultural, economic, and environmental challenges we face in our communities and around the globe. 

As owners of a valued island business began to think about retiring, the idea of helping their loyal workers form a co-op had real appeal. 

Adapted from an address given at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work, Washington University in St. Louis, January 22, 2015, in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Center for Social Development. 

For individuals to achieve upward economic mobility they must live in a supportive neighborhood with, among other things, high quality primary care and good public schools. But even when the key ingredients of success are present, households often find it hard to navigate services. A variety of intermediaries help address that problem.

Some are “embedded” in such organizations as hospitals or schools and help clients to obtain a range of supplementary services. Examples include Health Leads, City Health Works, and Grand Aids, along with local community health workers and school nurse programs.

Others are the result of hospital-led population health systems. Examples include the Parkland Health system in Texas, the Montefiore and the Mount Sinai health systems in New York, and Washington Adventist Hospital in Maryland.

Others still are organizations linking together institutions focused on the same goal by providing data sharing services, financing, or organizational support. Examples include community development financial institutions, but also integrated service systems, such as the Harlem Children’s Zone that organizes wraparound services for the families of its school students.

While intermediaries help households and can add value, they also face challenges in their operations. Often they are underfunded because budgets do not reflect their broad community value. Many regulatory and technical barriers impede information sharing with intermediaries, which is necessary to credibly show improved outcomes. There can also be a clash of culture between intermediaries and other organizations.

Policymakers in both the public and private sectors need to address these challenges so that intermediary institutions can demonstrate their value and fulfill their crucial role. 

Why does such a large gap exist between what donors say they would like to achieve with their philanthropy and where they actually make their biggest bets? And how can we close it?