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:

• 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:

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.