Clatsop County’s Community Health Advocacy and Resource Team
According to a 2016 Community Health Needs Assessment, when compared with other counties, Clatsop county residents are seven times more likely to have one or more chronic health conditions. Because of the prevalence in chronic diseases in Clatsop county and the growing understanding of how the social determinants of health impact them, in 2018 Clatsop County Public Health launched the Community Health Advocacy and Resource Team (CHART). CHART comprises education, housing, healthcare, and transportation partners, as well as community members, to impact policy, systems, and environmental changes with the goal of positively impacting the health of all Clatsop County residents.
CHART partners started meeting to understand what resources existed in the community, to work together instead of duplicating services, and to collaborate to work together and with the community towards healthier outcomes. CHART community meetings happen monthly and each member brings their own knowledge and experience to strengthen the discussions and shared learning. This infrastructure that exists is a huge community asset as it establishes coordinated partnerships that draw upon collective resources to positively impact health. It creates a system of collaboration that can easily launch new initiatives to improve community health and wellness.
CHART engages in participative decision making by members in order to keep the decision making processes more informal as well as to to allow creative ideas and collaboration to happen. For more formal decisions, such as when making project decisions, a consultative method is used. Decisions are made by consensus when possible and by a simple majority of those present when consensus cannot be reached. This way CHART is able to be responsive to community needs while working with multiple agencies.
Clatsop County Public Health is the backbone organization and staffs CHART to facilitate the meetings, support alignment and communications, guide the collective vision and strategy, and provide administrative and logistical support. CHART is currently supporting Clatsop County Public Health in the development of a nutritional hub and will function as a policy and sounding board to launch the project in the summer of 2019.
CHART showcases the public health modernization capability of partnerships by working together to have the greatest impact on health. To learn more about CHART, visit http://www.clatsopchart.org/.