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Throughout the year, community-centered practice continued to be at the heart of everything we did, shaping our work across a set of interrelated strategies. This is because we understand that communities that have been most impacted by structural injustices and poor health outcomes are closest to the solutions that will make a difference. As such, our work in community-centered practice informed how we strengthened practitioner knowledge and skills, transformed systems and policies, and built momentum to shift fields and narratives.
In 2023, we remained true to advancing equitable, upstream prevention at a community level. All of our work continued to reinforce our mission: To build prevention and health equity into key federal, state, local, and organizational policies, practices and actions to ensure that the places where all people live, work, play and learn foster health, safety, and wellbeing.
We also continued to advance work in land use and the built environment (park/green space equity and transportation), safety (violence prevention), and wellbeing (mental and behavioral health and trauma prevention)–all essential community health issues and areas in which our staff have deep knowledge and capacity to partner with communities to achieve solutions. We also focused on bridging health equity and racial justice as a key lens through which we approached our work.
In 2023, we welcomed the opportunity for more in-person engagement, both among staff and with communities and our partners. This engagement allowed us to go deeper in a number of ways, and we hope you will see that depth reflected in these accomplishments.
What you won’t see explicitly in our 2023 accomplishments is our continued emphasis on upgrading our operations and finance systems in support of the whole organization. As a result of our investment in operations, we celebrated a clean audit, upgraded our accounting software, transitioned to a hybrid work schedule in all our locations, and leveled up as an organization by releasing an updated compensation framework which included salary and benefit increases across the organization.
Our approach to ensuring that all people experience their full potential for health, safety, and wellbeing across the life course through thriving, equitable communities is rooted in community learning and partnership with organizations, collaboratives, and networks. We continued this trend in 2023 as you will see in our accomplishments that span four strategies:
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Community-Centered Practice: Partnering with communities in support of community-driven change
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Knowledge and Skill Building: Strengthening practitioner capacity to advance equitable health, safety, and wellbeing
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Systems and Policy Transformation: Changing systems and policies to produce equitable health, safety, and wellbeing
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Momentum Building: Strengthening a prevention and health equity ecosystem while shifting fields, norms, and narratives
We never do this work alone. And we are grateful to our many partners: communities and community members, practitioners, government agencies and systems leaders, foundations, public health organizations, and many other organizations advancing equitable health outcomes. These accomplishments would not be possible without our shared values, learning, and partnership.
Thank you!
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