Plugging the Grid #2: Pathways to Health

The Tulsa Health Department is spearheading an effort, called Pathways to Health, to develop a community-wide strategic planning tool for improving public health. The approach is community driven. THD is serving as the convener, but some 30 agencies have already met twice to produce a community health assessment and to begin outlining the structure of an Advisory Council for the project. The Council will work within the community (at the level of neighborhoods, for example), to help generate a list of public health priorities, resources, and action steps. Together with CAP’s Early Childhood Program, Tulsa Initiative will represent CAP on the Advisory Council. I’m hoping this effort contributes to the simultaneous construction of the vertical and horizontal grid. The resulting strategic plan will most certainly not limit itself to just young children, so in that sense, the grid is vertical. At the same time, I also hope the Council will work on developing a system that provides comprehensive health and medical services particularly to low-income families with young children (the horizontal grid).

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Thoughts on Non-profits and Governments, continued

Just to continue a bit on the themes of Diama’s post below, I wanted to call out a tangentially related piece I’d read.

At the Social Citizens blog, Allison Fine writes about the “privatization of public service.” While millenials (that’s my generation!) are much vaunted for their interest in voluntarism and non-profits, young people are sharply less interested in taking government jobs. (She cites a study, without links, that only 13% of local government managers are under age 40.) So it’s not just the policy, programs, and resources that are shifting toward non-profits and philanthropies – it’s the people too.

If we’re serious about scaling our innovations up and making truly impactful, community-wide change, we’re going to have to be serious about building institutions that can do the work well. That means we need good people, policies, and programs not just in our sector but in government as well.

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