Community Engagement

Community engagement is a process by which community members come together to reflect on and make decisions about the future of their community. Challenge project teams center the people who experience health inequities at the forefront of their work to ensure their knowledge informs the right solutions to truly meet community needs.

While community engagement has typically been thought of in the context of in-person events and meetings, it has taken on a whole new meaning during the pandemic. Challenge communities recognize that developing and sustaining connections with their community is an evolving process that requires different strategies over time and as community context shifts and changes.

From our Communities4Health blog:

• Social media’s health equity potential proving powerful during the pandemic
• Getting the most out of your social media
• Humanizing the virtual work landscape
• Resident leaders are blooming in the “Flower City”
• Optimism engineers are building bridges to advance equity
• Maximizing the Impact of your Partnerships: An Interview with Rishi Manchanda
• The payoff of fair compensation
• Setting the stage for authentic community engagement in Paterson

Additional resources on community engagement: 

• Podcast Episode Featuring Build Healthy Places Network’s Douglas Jutte: Socially Determined
• Engaging People with Lived Experience Toolkit
• Integrating Communications in Evaluation
• How can we use evaluation to support decision-making and reflection in this time of community crisis?
• Resident Engagement to Achieve Racial Equity
• Social Media Toolkit: A Primer for Local Health Department PIOs and Communications Professionals
• Inclusive Virtual Community Engagement During COVID-19
• How to Use Asset-Framing to Strengthen Nonprofit Work
• The Power of Community-Led Data Gathering with the Center for Native American Youth
• Video and Transcript: The Role of Narrative Change in Collective Action
• Fostering Partnerships for Community Engagement
• Public-Private Partnerships in Emergency Response: A Case Study of Milwaukee’s Civic Response Team
• Collective Impact in Rural Communities with Deb Halliday