Stat news highlights the importance of the Hospital toolkit as shows how "providers can channel their $340 billion annual purchasing power into disadvantaged communities. Currently, only about 2 percent of that money flows to businesses owned by minorities and women." ...Read More
Every day, we learn more about how patients’ health outcomes are tied not only to the healthcare they receive but also to the conditions in the communities where they live. Social and economic inequities, amplified by race, often emerge as the leading factors explaining differences in health outcomes and life expectancies.
Through local and inclusive hiring, health systems can invest in an ecosystem of success that lifts up local residents; helps create career pathways for low-income, minority, and hard-to-employ populations; and begins to transform neighborhoods. In the process, health systems can develop a more efficient workforce pipeline, meet sustainability and inclusion goals, and ultimately improve the health of their communities. Establishing a local and inclusive hiring strategy is an important first step towards rethinking your health system’s role in the community. This toolkit can help you get started.
Drawing on a decade's worth of conversations with key leaders in the growing field, from cooperative developers and community activists to impact investors and social enterprise innovators, this book of interviews from the Democracy Collaborative dives into the front lines of the movement to build community wealth. Exploring both the breakthrough projects that helped define the field and the lessons learned when deep challenges presented themselves, Conversations on Community Wealth Building is a unique look at the people, practices, and policies behind the new equitable development models of the 21st century.
Across the United States a growing number of communities are experimenting with innovative ways to create a more equal, democratic, and community-based economy from the ground up. Our Vice President and Senior Fellow Marjorie Kelly, Manager of Community Development Programs Sarah McKinley, and Research Associate Violeta Duncan co-write a piece for the Renewal Journal on how we can use a "politics of place" and "politics for places" to uplift communities across the country and world:
While the bio-medical definition of health focuses on the absence of disease, when asked what makes them feel healthy, communities often identify many other factors ranging from financial security to nourishing relationships. This new report from the Creating Health Collaborative, an international community of innovators, puts forth principles for “creating health beyond healthcare” and identifies key drivers shifting the field. Notable principles include embracing complexity, measuring what matters, acknowledging power imbalances, and sustainability. The report is drawn from the Creating Health Collaborative’s July 2015 convening.
This report, published in partnership by the Center on Social Disparities in Health, the Build Healthy Places Network, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is a "resource for those working to improve low-income communities and the lives of the people living in them." Despite growing recognition that social and economic conditions are the primary drivers of health, the fields of community development and public health remain siloed. This new report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Build Healthy Places Network outlines specific opportunities to integrate the two fields and overcome barriers to collaboration. It also includes recommendations on how to measure the impact of cross-sector collaborations and refine programs accordingly.
In this red state, publicly owned utilities provide electricity to all 1.8 million people. Here's our Research Director Thomas Hanna's take on how Nebraska took its energy out of corporate hands and made it affordable for everyday residents.
This coming February, our friends at NeighborWorks will host a convention of local and national experts, thought leaders and innovators for a stimulating day of presentations, interactive sessions, networking and up-close learning that will help you understand and capitalize on the vital connection between community development, education, health and employment.Read more about Symposium: Creating Opportunity through Collaboration...
The Aspen Institute, One Dupont Circle NW, Suite 700, Washington, DC 20036
On Wednesday, January 27, 2016, Washington, D.C. from 12:00-1:30pm, our Executive Vice President and a Senior Fellow, Marjorie Kelly, will speak on a panel alongside Richmond, Virginia Mayor Dwight C. Jones, and Sociologist and Fellow at The Worker Institute at Cornell, Sanjay Pinto. The discussion, part of The Aspen Institute's Working in America series, will be moderated by MSNBC's Dorian T. Warren, a Roosevelt Institute Fellow.Read more about Panel: Can Inclusive Economic Development Build Better Jobs and a Stronger Regional Economy?...
How do low-income communities learn to advance economically and build wealth? Low-income communities and communities of color, in challenging structural economic and social inequality, have historically grappled with tensions inherent to development. Who participates in, directs, and ultimately owns the economic-development process? In creating and sustaining new, inclusive economic institutions, how do community members cultivate and pass on skills, commitment and knowledge—especially among those who have long faced barriers to education and employment? And how should communities strike an appropriate balance between utilizing local knowledge and accessing outside expertise? This report draws on case studies of 11 different community economic development initiatives from across the United States to highlight a diverse set of powerful answers to these critical questions.
A two-volume encyclopedia containing more than 130 signed entries, Achieving Sustainability covers economic and environmental ideas, as well as governance, demographic, and socio-cultural aspects of the concept. Democracy Collaborative Research Director Steve Dubb along with Executive Director Ted Howard and Research Associate Sarah McKinley have contributed the chapter “Economic Democracy”, which outlines the history of the economic democracy movement, highlighting community wealth building strategies such as community development finance institutions and cooperatives.
The American Independent Business Alliance (AMIBA) has developed a new guide to help independent business owners, localist advocates, and local officials promote local business and community wealth building. The guide outlines strategies to build successful “Buy Local” campaigns that encourage consumers to shop at locally owned stores. It includes tips and resources for campaign content development, message framing, targeted marketing, and execution.
