Our Projects

We advocate for equitable policies & systems from our methodologies to our policy initiatives.

Advocacy

Intentional work alongside BIPOC communities

Our Reports

Improving health outcomes from an anti-racist lens

Decolonizing Health

Respecting Elders & practicing anti-colonial resistance

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Advocacy

Since its inception in 2017, CHBC has worked alongside our own Black, Indigenous & People of Color (BIPOC) communities to transform the societal conditions in which we exist. Many of our communities are here because we have been displaced. Still, we have survived and thrived because of our ancestors, the medicine we share with each other, and the collective strength we continue to build.

Mission: To advocate for equitable policies & systems by collaborating effectively, building leadership, and serving as conduits for our communities.

Vision:

  • Healthy Communities/Thriving Communities
  • Equitable Systems
  • Holistic Care

Values:

 

  • Respect all Cultures/Communities
  • Integrity
  • Effective Collaboration
  • Collective Leadership
  • Community Resilience Lens
  • Holistic Health
  • Equity

CHBC believes that:

 

  • Our work must center the needs of those who are most impacted by injustice.
  • Everyone in our communities have essential skills, stories, and presence to contribute.
  • We are the experts in our communities and know best what is needed to create and implement policies, programs and initiatives that fulfill our community’s dreams.
  • Our connection to the land and each other should drive personal and community development efforts.
  • Power exists at the tables communities build and not within the existing racist, colonized structures that are currently reflected by the institutions that attempt to govern our lives.

Policy Initiatives

The CHBC has been working towards improved health outcomes for the communities represented, since 2017. Our focus areas have been mental health and health priorities, which we have determined using Community Based Participatory Research.

Holistic means we view health priorities from a decolonizing and anti-racist lens. Health is not the absence of disease. It is our highest aspirations for our whole selves, taking into account the mental, spiritual, and social health of our families and communities. 

Each of the systems we interact with must be recreated by and for those most impacted by injustice in order to have healthy and strong communities. These systems include, but not limited to: education, health, economic, transportation, food, governance, legal, and housing.

Decolonizing Research

Our Elders have passed on important ancestral knowledge that helps us continue to grow and stay rooted. All of the research conducted by CHBC applies decolonizing and anti-racist methods in order to shift health care systems and policy and better serve our communities. 

We focus on illustrating the breadth and depth of knowledge that can be gathered when different ways of knowing are acknowledged and valued by centering voices that have historically been silenced.

Self-proclaimed “liberal” and “equitable” institutions that believe they serve our communities have a traumatic impact and are a new form of colonialism. We become  commodities of the very health systems that claim to serve us. 

Because of this, our researchers remain intentionally accountable to community relationships and actions that result in relevant, respectful, and non-oppressive outcomes. Our work is a form of anti-colonial resistance.

Methodologies

CBPR – Collaborative approach to research that equitably involves all partners in the research process and recognizes the unique strengths that each brings. CBPR begins with a research topic of importance to the community with the aim of combining knowledge and action for social change to improve community health and eliminate health disparities. (Kellogg Foundation)

‘Everything Is Medicine’ Report

Mental illness is a major public health crisis that disproportionately impacts BIPOC due to the stressors of racial and social inequities. For the CHBC, mental health emerged as a priority for research, policy, and organizing in 2018. Over the course of 2019, CHBC set out to learn more about how our communities experience mental health. We interviewed 291 people living in King County with the goal of determining our collective priorities. “Everything is Medicine: Community Health Board Coalition Mental Health Assessment” is a culmination of our community-led research, our collective stories, and the development of policy recommendations.

‘Understanding Our Strengths, Elevating Our Priorities’ Report

Our purpose in conducting this research was to assess and understand the health priorities of our respective communities. A tool was constructed to broadly assess our community’s health priorities using a Community Based Participatory Research framework. We hosted focus groups and conducted interviews. Our goal was to understand the priorities of our communities in order to effectively advocate. The data is being used to provide policy recommendations to our partners and stakeholders and to develop our strategy. This research was funded by the Health Equity Fund (formerly known as the Pacific Hospital Preservation & Development Authority.

Advocacy & Recommendations

Even before COVID-19 became a pandemic in our region, CHBC had been pushing to ensure our communities’ rights in education, health care, mental health were upheld and their humanity recognized by a system that for so long has failed to value them in a meaningful way.

Covid-19 has put these concerns into starker relief. As a result, CHBC is working closely with community partners to lift BIPOC, immigrant and refugee communities voices since they have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic.

Policy Initiatives
The CHBC has been working towards improved health outcomes for the communities represented, since 2017. Our focus areas have been mental health and health priorities, which we have determined using Community Based Participatory Research.

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Decolonizing Research
Our Elders have passed on important ancestral knowledge that helps us continue to grow and stay rooted. All of the research conducted by CHBC applies decolonizing and anti-racist methods in order to shift health care systems and policy and better serve our communities.

Read More

'Everything Is Medicine' Report
Our research team members, lead by Dr. Damarys Espinoza, disseminated the report: ‘Everything is Medicine’, December, 2019. As a result of this work, we arrived at 5 key main policy recommendations.

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