Fostering collective healing through interdisciplinary partnerships

• Session: CHPPD Poster Session 1
• Program: Community Health Planning and Policy Development

Abstract

The current socio-political moment urges us to recognize the imperative of strengthening the capacity of interdisciplinary partnerships to address health crises rooted in racism and discrimination and to foster health equity and justice. We are called to reimagine these collaborative policy and planning spaces as sites for radical collective practice. From 2018-2020, we engaged with the Sacramento Youth Violence Prevention Collective, which brings together public health practitioners and researchers and our collaborators in healthcare, education, social services, economic development and the criminal legal system to address neighborhood violence locally in Sacramento, CA. We were informed by the Collective’s ongoing use of the Collective Impact Model to combat violence and foster resilience in the community. The Collective Impact Model was created by FSG Consulting and the Aspen Institute’s Forum for Community Solutions as a model for multidisciplinary collaboration. We introduced the principles of the Radical Healing Framework to the Collective. Dr. Shawn Ginwright created the Radical Healing Framework to help groups shift from trauma-informed approaches to healing-centered engagement. We felt that Radical Healing would deepen collaborative work and enable the Collective to better analyze the root causes of violence, to more deeply engage with local community members, to apply practices of healing, and to define policies for systemic change. The combined “Collective Healing Framework” reflects today’s public health imperative–engaging interdisciplinary partnerships to address trauma, sustain resilience, and foster collective efficacy to create systemic change around the structural determinants of health. Such commitments challenge collaborators to build the relationships, critical self-reflection, cognitive shifts, and collective understanding needed to move through disagreements, superficial compromise, and performative engagement and actions, towards healing-centered systemic change. Our Collective Healing Framework can urge collaboratives to put communities experiencing systemic trauma at the center, including: Black women and girls, other people of color, people experiencing houselessness, undocumented immigrants, incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people, and transgender and gender-expansive individuals. This re-prioritization can work to disrupt traditional power dynamics and metrics, deepen and expand accountability, prioritize healing, and transform interdisciplinary practice.

• Emily Cowan
  • New York University
• LeConte Dill
• Shavaun Sutton
  • Northeastern University
• Arielsela Holdbrook-Smith
  • New York University School of Global Public Health

Learning Areas

Advocacy for health and health education Assessment of individual and community needs for health education Diversity and culture Program planning Public health or related research