Connecting Across Differences

Meaningful community engagement begins with building relationships and growing trust. This module explores why this matters and possibilities it unlocks.

“Authentic community engagement ensures that the people who are closest to an issue, place, or opportunity are involved in creating bold visions for their future. This includes learning together, building capacity, building relationships, and making decisions. Community engagement increases community cohesion and allows community members to have ownership over the outcomes that will ultimately impact them.”

–Tamarack Institute

FROM ENGAGEMENT TO OWNERSHIP

Aligned with this approach, we encourage CHCs and partner organizations to assess their community engagement using the Spectrum of Community Engagement to Ownership guide. This tool is designed to provide leaders and stewards with a clear understanding of their current relationship with their communities, where they aspire to be, and the necessary steps to get there. It serves as a reliable compass, guiding them through the process.

The movement for genuine engagement is gaining momentum as organizations and institutions across the country value lived experience and create opportunities for integration and interdependence with learned experience. Numerous examples exist of how communities claim ownership of their problems and solutions, step into their civic muscle and power, and create a much-needed sense of belonging.

Earning Trust and Building Power

CHCs have the opportunity to join this movement thanks to the deep trust that communities place in them. They have the power to foster the conditions for community-driven solutions and systemic change. This is particularly evident in those working actively with community health workers (CHWs), who serve as strategic bridges within the community.

in practice

Rogue’s Community Health Worker initiative is built around the idea that health is shaped by more than medical care alone. Their CHWs work alongside patients to address barriers such as food, housing, transportation, benefits, safety, and behavioral health, using person-centered action plans grounded in each person’s strengths and priorities. Through referral and screening processes, the strategy helps connect clinical care with the wider supports people need to improve health and well-being. Rogue has also invested in a Community Advisory Committee to help provide leadership guidance, further strengthening the connection between community voice, care, and action.

“We want to utilize the Vital Conditions framework to align communication about the clinic and create a transparent process to engage the community in order to build trust”

-CHCs of Lane County

Commit to Deeper Community Engagement

Shifting from Business as Usual to a New Desired State

From

Approaching community with a “fixing” mindset; expertise with organizations and professionals

Expecting community members to engage without compensation

Offering limited and cursory methods of community engagement

Dismissing cultural and emotional differences

To

Approaching community with a supportive/asset mindset; expertise lies with the community

Involving community members, particularly those who are most proximate to the challenge/opportunity in the entire process (framing, generating solutions, and execution)

Offering multiple modes of engagement (community organizing, interactive community meetings and forums, and advisory committees or boards)

Ensuring equitable compensation of community in engagement processes

Embracing cultural and emotional differences with humility and curiosity

Opportunities for Moving Forward

CHCs are well-positioned to develop and role model new and deeper relationships with communities. These relationships can nurture a community’s civic muscle, power, and lived experience to elevate and support the ultimate goal of owning and leading transformation.

Opportunities to move toward more meaningful community engagement include:

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Develop leadership structures for community leadership representation and influence in decision making

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Identify, partner with, and mentor grassroots leaders and CHWs to actively participate and guide programming and systemic changes

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Ensure that all staff are equipped with the necessary cultural humility and trauma skills to support responsive and genuine relationships with communities

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Create and fund a community leadership budget to offer equitable compensation to leaders and consultants with lived experience and related activities and training

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Put What You’ve Learned Into Practice

TEAM REFLECTION QUESTIONS

What does meaningful community engagement look like in our context, and whose voices or perspectives are missing from current conversations, partnerships, or decision-making spaces?

How are we currently building trust, sharing power, and creating real opportunities for community leadership—and where do we need to grow?

What would it take for our organization to more fully partner with community members as leaders, co-creators, and guides for change?

WHAT WE’VE LEARNED

Use these prompts to explore this concept in practice.

NWorking across differences is essential to strengthening Belonging and Civic Muscle
NTrust and connection create the conditions for people and organizations to work together effectively
NDifferences in experience, perspective, and role can strengthen solutions when they are engaged intentionally
NStrong relationships make it possible to take shared responsibility for improving the Vital Conditions
NBuilding connection across differences lays the foundation for more coordinated and sustained action