Formerly the Vaccine Implementation Collaborative, and envisioned jointly by community leaders and DOH staff in February of 2021, the Community Collaborative is a collective comprising of members who are involved from many different sectors in uplifting communities that have experienced the devastating impacts of COVID-19 through co-designing recovery efforts with the goal of eliminating further harms on Black, Indigenous, communities of color and all those facing harm due to systemic racism and oppression.
The Community Collaborative ensures an equity and social justice lens is applied in the Department of Health’s (DOH) planning and decision-making opportunities related to recovery efforts beyond its vaccine equity body of work. We will continue to prioritize and center communities most impacted by health inequities, by honoring their labor and voices in our decision-making process, while simultaneously creating space to foster collaboration with community-based organizations, impacted businesses, cross-sector partners, health care entities, and public health agencies.
- Our Thought Partners
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The Community Collaborative is guided by the direction of our Thought Partners. Thought Partners are community stakeholders and organizers who take a more formal, active, and represented role within the Community Collaborative to ensure it is community led, centers the communities and sectors that have been most disproportionately impacted by health inequities, and advances pandemic recovery efforts well beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Amelia Bai, Oceania Northwest
- Chauné Fitzgerald, Women of Wisdom Tri-Cities
- Cyril Walrond, Black Prisoners’ Caucus, Northwest Community Bail Fund, RECLAIM
- JanMarie Olmstead, Seventh Generation Strategies
- Jo Anderson, City of Tukwila
- Kathleen Wilcox, African Americans Reach and Teach Health
- Lin Crowley, Asian Pacific Islander Coalition
- Lua Pritchard, (Skye Rozon - designate), Asia Pacific Cultural Center
- Mayra Colazo, Central Washington Disability Resources
- Mulki Mohamed, Runta News
- Pa Joof, WA West African Center
- Shalom Agtarap, Common Good Tacoma
- Todd Holloway, Center for Independence
- Van Kuno, (Steve Bader- designate), Refugee & Immigrant NW Services
- Vincent Perez, Equity Institute
- Our Focus Populations
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The focus of this effort is to start to undo the harms on the following populations who, based on extensive research and data nationally, most negatively experience the generational, current, and longstanding impacts of racism and health inequities making it a public health crisis.
- Black & Indigenous Communities - Descendants of enslaved Africans who continue to experience the ongoing and deep impacts of systemic racism in all its facets. Indigenous Peoples directly impacted by settler colonialism within the US continent & territories which have created vast health inequities for their communities. This includes American Indians/Native Alaskan/Native (AI/NA) and Native Hawaiians/Pacific Islander (NH/PI) communities.
- Immigrant & Refugee Communities – Our community members who experience xenophobic treatment and are alienated from culturally and linguistically responsive services due to their immigration status in the U.S.
- Individuals with Disabilities – Our community members continue to face institutional and cultural discrimination due to their disabilities and are not afforded basic access provisions and accommodations.
- Agricultural & Food Production Workers – Our community members who labor on our agricultural farms, on our meat farms, and in our seafood industry who experience harm working in often unsafe working conditions.
- Queer & Trans Communities – Our communities who identify as Two-Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans & Queer+ that experience systemic homophobia and transphobia and continue to struggle for basic health access and health services that treat them with dignity.
- Youth & Elder Communities – Our young people and our elders who are often left out of key decision-making tables that impact their well-being where harmful policies are created without their active involvement.
- Systems-Involved Communities – Our community members who are locked up in our prisons, detention centers and juvenile facilities without access to humane care.
- Unhoused Members – Our relatives who continue to face marginalization due to skyrocketed housing costs rendering them housing insecure and vulnerable to physical, social, and systemic violence.
- Rural Communities – Our communities in rural areas that lack the economic and political means and are often left out of critical health equity provisions due to the lack of resources in their jurisdiction.
- Our Commitments
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- Build Authentic Relationships: We are committed to building relationships across sectors of government & community institutions that are focused on shared goals of achieving health equity.
- Center Communities Most-Impacted: We believe that those who are closest to the issues are also closest to the solutions. The leadership of those, with lived experience, are most valuable in decision-making tables.
- Focus on Solutions: We will address community-identified needs and implement recommendations to ensure equitable access to health resources and support policies that uplift health equity.
- Lead with Transparency: We will ensure that community engagement is not an after thought but a lived practice based on accountability and ensuring that community is always brought in in all parts of our decision-making process.
- Community Collaborative Session
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This is a space where Collaborative members can connect with DOH staff to receive real time updates and share questions and concerns directly. They can also provide feedback on planning, outreach, and access efforts through virtual meetings and email/phone call follow up. We are also committed to creating space where Collaborative members can strengthen partnerships, share best practices and resources, facilitate networking, and build community with one another on a monthly basis.
Past Sessions Archive
For meeting minutes, notes and presentation slides for meetings that have taken place after June 2023, please visit the WA Portal website.
June 21, 2023
May 17, 2023
February 22, 2023
September 7, 2022
July 6, 2022 June 1, 2022 May 4, 2022 April 27, 2022 March 2, 2022 February 2, 2022 - Community Collaborative Workgroups
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Communities can share concerns and needs, leverage efforts and resources, and collaborate on community-informed strategies.
Access Functional Needs (AFN) Disability Partner - Intended to center and prioritize people with disabilities and intersecting marginalized identities who experience compounded oppression, such as BIPOC, queer, and/or unhoused persons with a disability.
Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander Health Equity Partner - Intended to center and prioritize Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander communities experiencing vast health disparities due to data and policy erasure.
Carceral Health Equity Partner - Intended to center and prioritize individuals and their families and communities who are and have been harmed by the carceral system, and pre-incarceration exposure to adverse structural determinants of health.
Additional information
- Funding opportunity: Building Community Capacity for Equitable COVID-19 Recovery (WA Portal).
- For more information about the collaborative, visit the Community Collaborative page on WA Portal.
- To join our Community Collaborative, please fill out this form.
- Read and share A Chorus of COVID – Voices From the Frontlines, available in multiple languages.