Video Snapshots: Expert Voices on Community Development, Health & Finance

PHI’s Build Healthy Places Network’s Video Snapshot Series is a series of quick deep dives featuring local and national experts from the community development, health, and finance sectors.

The series includes:

• Shifting Investing Practices into Community Control (August 22, 2023)
• Healthy Neighborhoods Study: Participatory Action Research and a Community First Approach (July 28, 2023)
• How the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule can advance racial and health equity (March 29, 2023)
• Earning a Community’s Trust: A prerequisite for equitable community partnerships (February 17, 2023)
• Building Healthy Rural Communities Together: The role of rural philanthropy in cross-sector partnership to improve community health & well-being (May 10, 2021)
• Bolstering Healthy & Thriving Communities: the importance of policy, civic muscle and belonging (May 3, 2021)

See the videos & additional resources:

Shifting Investing Practices into Community Control (August 22, 2023)

This video snapshot focuses on efforts to seed participatory, community-led investing practices in the field. The conversation highlights the work of Tap Bui, Co-Executive Director of Song CDC in New Orleans, LA, and their efforts to advance community-led work in New Orleans East. Song CDC is part of the BHPN Community Innovations for Racial Equity initiative. The video also highlights the work of Sonia Sarkar, who serves on the Leadership Team of Shift Health Accelerator. Sonia co-led the Common Future Action Lab: Participatory Investing initiative which produced a Participatory Investing Toolkit, a playbook for operationalizing power-shifting within philanthropic investment. The discussion underscores opportunities for funders to approach grantmaking and investing through new lenses, opening up opportunities for community ownership, wealth building, and trust-based processes that stand to create more equitable and community-driven impact.

Healthy Neighborhoods Study: Participatory Action Research and a Community First Approach (July 28, 2023)

In this video snapshot, Build Healthy Places Network’s Ashley Hernandez speaks with Vedette Gavin from Verge Impact Partners and Andrew Seeder from Conservation Law Foundation. Vedette is a senior research consultant and CO Principal Investigator and Andrew is a research scientist for participatory methods and training for the Healthy Neighborhoods Study.

During this discussion, Vedette and Andrew dive into the participatory action research (PAR) process and explain how PAR can support a community first model by prioritizing the experience of residents when evaluating what matters most for the health of a community. This approach can be used to impact neighborhood change so that it shifts power to residents, helping them gain more control over developments in their communities. Vedette and Andrew discuss how institutions working to prioritize community voice and engagement should identify their impacts on neighborhoods, create safe spaces, and build trust with residents to create meaningful investments that benefit those who are impacted.

How the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule can advance racial and health equity (March 29, 2023)

In this interview, Build Healthy Places Network’s Co-Executive Director Colleen Flynn, speaks with Will Dominie, the Housing Justice Program Director from Human Impact Partners, a national non-profit that transforms the field of public health to center equity and build collective power with social justice movements.

During this discussion, Will shares why his organization is prioritizing the proposed changes to the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule. He also highlights the discriminatory practices and inequitable opportunities that BIPOC communities experience and how these changes can uplift community voices and increase self-determination to address inequities and create healthier futures.

Earning a Community’s Trust: A prerequisite for equitable community partnerships (February 17, 2023)

In this video snapshot, Build Healthy Places Network’s Co-Executive Director, Ruth Thomas Squance, PhD, MPH, speaks with Philip M. Alberti, PhD, Founding Director of the AAMC Center for Health Justice. The two discuss the origins of the Principles for Trustworthiness, why the process is as important as the product, and how the tool applies to multi-sector efforts committed to long term relationships, where resources are shared and decisions are made collectively.

Building Healthy Rural Communities Together: The role of rural philanthropy in cross-sector partnership to improve community health & well-being (May 10, 2021)

In this 14 minute Video Snapshot, Build Healthy Places Network’s Ashley Hernandez speaks with Allen Smart, a national spokesperson and advocate for improving rural philanthropic practice under his group, PhilanthropywoRx.

The two discuss the important contributions philanthropy brings to community development and health partnerships in rural areas. Allen Smart also provides examples of philanthropy’s key role in accelerating investments aimed at improving health and well-being in rural communities and lays out ways community developers can connect with the philanthropic sector.

Bolstering Healthy & Thriving Communities: the importance of policy, civic muscle and belonging (May 3, 2021)

In this brief Video Snapshot, Build Healthy Places Network’s Colleen Flynn speaks with Esther Shin, President of Urban Strategies, Inc., who leads a team of professionals with expertise in human capital and economic development to support persistently marginalized communities across the country. The two discuss the impact of policy on creating a more equitable society; why civic muscle and belonging are important to achieving racial equity; and Urban Strategies, Inc’s role in supporting civic engagement processes to advance community-led policies. 

Esther Shin, who was part of BHPN’s and Shift Health Accelerator’s policy council to advise the Healthy Neighborhood Investments: Policy Scan & Strategy Map, illustrates the power of policy in shaping outcomes for families and communities and how civic engagement should be at the heart of equity work.