PHEAL Principle #2

COMMUNITY-BASED ADVOCACY

Actively and intentionally do the hard work to deeply listen and learn from and with communities.

Engage in Truthful Interactions

  • Center. Rather than following conventional practices of omitting and ignoring the experiences, memories, practices, traditions, hopes, and dreams of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, low income, immigrant, and other historically marginalized/under-represented communities, make them the top priorities and central elements of planning practice. Centralizing historically overburdened communities with health inequities includes honoring the objectives and goals of organized initiatives, such as BlackSpace.

  • Endeavor. An attitude of cultural, professional, and personal humility is necessary to effectively deliver planning and public health benefits in the community. We must strive to always be in an open, learning mode—never assuming we know or are competent in any or all cultures. Do the utmost to see from another person's perspective, particularly those of historically overburdened communities with health inequities, while purposefully making choices that frame an anti-racist, humane approach to providing and protecting spaces and places for all people. Trust your innate moral compass and adopt and follow a personal and professional code of ethics. 

  • Strive for Veracity. In working with communities, planners and other professionals must search for the root causes of toxic stress, anxiety, and community trauma and build new directions based on a meaningful exploration of community needs and values. We must be aware of, recognize, and understand community trauma to discover ways to work toward community healing. We must strive to provide a safe venue for truth-telling and reconciliation of past injustices.  

  • Build Trust. Recognize that community engagement that is based on truth-telling, relationship building, and community capacity building takes time. Build relationships  before a policy and planning process officially begins with the aim of building community capacity and leadership. We must keep listening and learning from communities to grow. Build learning opportunities into each effort and maintain a growth mindset that values systemic improvement with each practice and interaction. The schedule for any planning effort should "move at the speed of trust" as suggested in the BlackSpace Manifesto.

  • Be Accountable. Accountability emerges from transparency.  We must seek to secure accountability from responsible actors in urban planning and policy-making processes through effective communication and evaluation. 

Acknowledge that the Community is in Charge 

  • Engage Authentically. Traditional approaches to community engagement and community planning are not inclusive enough. Planning cannot happen only at City Hall; it must also occur beyond its confinements to include appointed and non-appointed local leaders and community-based organizations. Community members, especially young people and older adults, must be co-empowered and entrusted to lead and should be included at the front end and throughout, not just as a checkpoint midway through the process. 

  • Defer to Community Expertise. Community members are the experts of their community. Learning their stories, understanding their lived experiences, and listening to what community members have to say should form the essence of any plan or policy-making approach. Build on the strengths of communities and honor local knowledge, history, and institutional memory.

  • Empower. Prioritize investments in genuine involvement of diverse voices so that historically overburdened communities with health inequities are able to influence and lead institutional, policy, and systems changes that positively impact health equity. Balancing the scales of power is essential to the co-creation of public policy centered on equitable outcomes and designing healthy communities for all.

  • Plan with Collective Impact. Drive planning processes and implementation with a collective impact approach in which all community members see themselves as active and valuable players. Use a grassroots approach with multiple iterations until positive changes begin to improve outcomes.

Figure It Out Together

  • Imagine. The re-invention of our communities requires the participation, perspectives, and imagination of previously excluded individuals, communities, and professions. Build diverse partnerships with artists, culture-bearers, local arts organizations, young people, older adults, public health professionals, and others in creative processes to envision communities. Incorporate stories and culture in the plan-making process to create a way for us to understand and communicate what the community values most. The stories of historically overburdened communities with health inequities, in particular, should be used as a framework for determining values and needs.  

  • Feel. Planning and policymaking efforts must incorporate the feelings, memories, and emotions of the community and its members. A successful plan must adequately reflect the true gestalt and sense of place of the community. Consider artistic or tactical interventions as ways to engage community members in new ways. Rethink the use of presentation formats to gather insights, and consider actively engaging participants, particularly young people who will inherit and implement the plan, as well as older adults who carry community memories and emotions.

Uphold the Power of Data.

Stress not only the importance of rigorous empirical data and case studies, but also magnify individuals' lived experiences and histories in decision-making. They are the foundation for charting a new health equity path. The use of both quantitative and qualitative data gives a more accurate picture of inequities and identifies current and past patterns to rectify. Bring in community organizations and local colleges or universities to help "ground truth" data.