By: Adam Luecking
December 5th, 2022
Social Sector Hero Spotlights tell stories of exemplary social and public sector organizations that are making measurable differences in their communities. The following Whatcom County, Washington (USA) spotlight is an excerpt from “Social Sector Hero – How Government and Philanthropy Can Fund for Impact” by Adam Luecking. You can download the book for free here and read all 16 Social Sector Hero Spotlights.
North Cascades National Park, Whatcom County, Washington (USA)
Table of Contents
2. Assembling the Healthy Whatcom Team
3. Houston, We Have a Systems Problem
4. But First…Results-Based Accountability and Racial Equity Training
5. Creating a Laser-Focus on Equity and School Readiness
6. Looking Forward and Lessons Learned
1. Setting the Scene
Whatcom County is in the northwestern corner of Washington State and shares a border with Canada, as well as two indigenous tribes: the Lummi Nation and the Nooksack Tribe. They are deeply connected to the mountains (North Cascades) and waterways (the Salish Sea and many rivers) that have been protected by native tribes since time immemorial. The county’s population is roughly 230,000 and predominantly White (86.2 percent). As is the case throughout the country, this isn’t by accident but by historical design.
2. Assembling the Healthy Whatcom Team
Community Health Improvement is a best practice for Health Departments and a requirement to be nationally accredited by the Public Health Accreditation Board. Knowing this, Whatcom County got to work developing an anti-racist, community-driven process to create a Community Health Assessment that resulted in a Community Health Improvement Plan (CHIP). Led by Amy Rydel, Health Planning Specialist at the Whatcom County Health Department, the Healthy Whatcom Team convened for the first time in 2017. This team is a cross-sector group of stakeholders guiding the community health improvement process to advance racial justice and develop the County’s CHIP.
This work would not have been possible without early investments from the Chuckanut Health Foundation (CHF), Mount Baker Foundation (MBF), PeaceHealth, and Whatcom Community Foundation. CHF established a fund for community health improvement that other funders could pay into called the Healthy Whatcom Fund. This created a flexible funding source and removed barriers — through compensation for participation and expertise — for individuals with personal experiences of racism, marginalization, or difficulty trying to access the systems the County is trying to change. MBF provided the funds to use technology for the Turn the Curve conversations using disaggregated data from the beginning of the journey.
3. Houston, We Have a Systems Problem
In 2018, Whatcom completed a Community Health Assessment to better understand experiences with health and well-being in the county. After disaggregating their data by race, they unveiled a pattern. The pattern told a story of people of color being disproportionately impacted across all systems (education, health care, child welfare, criminal, legal, etc.). Whatcom didn’t have a people problem — they had a systems problem.
In 2019, Whatcom County gathered over 100 community members together to share the quantitative data alongside community member stories and personal experiences. They then went through a facilitated process to identify the top three priorities for collaborative community action, with racial equity threaded through each priority:
- Child and youth mental health
- Early learning and childcare
- Housing for children and families.
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4. But First…Results-Based Accountability & Racial Equity Training
Before jumping into action, the Healthy Whatcom team examined each priority and the work already happening. In doing so, they realized that there was a tremendous amount of work underway — but it wasn’t having the intended impact. This brought them to Results-Based Accountability and collaboration with Marcos Marquez at Clear Impact. They also engaged with the Racial Equity Institute, a nationally-renowned organization focused on anti-racism and undoing structural racism. The goal? To incorporate community learning about systemic racism and undoing systems of oppression before they developed their Action Plans.
An RBA workshop brought practical, actionable, and methodical approaches to planning, implementation, and evaluation. The addition of REI’s groundwater workshop helped the team determine which evidence-based interventions would truly address racist structures, policies, and institutions. Combining RBA and REI blended the strength of science with the collective wisdom of lived experiences — all grounded in trust. The team was more ready than ever to bring creative, brave, and frankly, under-researched solutions to address racial inequity.
Then COVID struck, and the work was paused for almost a year, but in May 2021, Healthy Whatcom resumed its efforts with a series of Zoom strategic planning workshops with over 140 community partners. Together, they used RBA to develop community-driven and community-centered Action Plans for child and youth mental health, housing, and early learning and child care. These Action Plans became Whatcom County’s CHIP.
5. Creating a Laser-Focus on Equity and School Readiness
Understanding the importance of ‘less is more,’ Healthy Whatcom began by looking at kindergarten readiness disaggregated by race and ethnicity during the workshops. What they found was that about half of all children were entering kindergarten ready to learn. When they dug deeper and disaggregated by race, they found that children of color were half as likely to enter kindergarten ready to learn as their white peers.
During the Zoom workshops, community members came together to dig into the early-learning data and asked themselves — what’s the story behind the disparity? In this case, inclusion was the key to unlocking the answer. For Healthy Whatcom, how they do their work is just as important as the work itself. To eliminate inequities and advance racial justice in each phase of community health improvement, Healthy Whatcom strives to shift power to communities of color, make systems-level change, and center the voices and experiences of community members who are Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color. As a result, they intentionally ensured that participants in these workshops brought a mix of personal experiences of racism, marginalization, and/or access to systems they were trying to change. They also included people with resources and power within the systems to make a change.
5. Looking Forward and Lessons Learned
Healthy Whatcom completed its CHIP in March 2022 and began launching its action teams. The processes they developed through RBA workshops — especially including disaggregation of data — moved forward with them into implementation. To ensure their work continues to demonstrate their values during implementation, they are collaborating with funders to develop processes, like participatory budgeting exercises, that shift power into the hands of those with lived experience to decide where and how resources are allocated. This will help create flexible funding streams and shift the “fighting for crumbs” mindset to one of collaborative fundraising.
Whatcom County’s work is in its early phases, just as it is over at March of Dimes. At the time of writing, it is a bit early to see turned curves. But Whatcom is creating better, targeted CHIP strategies with a multi-layered disaggregation of data. In short, disaggregate before strategizing. Their work also shows us that RBA is a flexible framework that can incorporate and elevate anti-racism and equity work to move communities forward.
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