Civic Participation is Key to Health Equity

The core value of equity infuses all of Vitalyst’s work, and it serves as a core driver of our Civic Participation goal. Civic Participation impacts health by building social and cultural cohesion, including robust social and civic voices, supportive relationships, and community power. Just as importantly, Vitalyst works to influence civic institutions like city governments and state agencies to authentically engage residents. The Civic Participation goal’s long-term outcomes include powerful residents and responsive policymaking supported by fair and just processes.

The past two years have seen considerable investment, exploration and experiential learning in the civic participation domain. Those experiences and learnings were captured in three publications during FY2019:

• Civic Participation Beyond Voting: Seeding Civic Participation Through Research (October 2018) – a four-page Brief on Community-Based Participatory Action Research, including a review of its implementation in Maryvale.
• Investing in Resident Leadership: Understanding the Ripple Effect of Impact in South Phoenix (October 2018) – a twelve-page brief chronicling the analysis and findings that resulted when Vitalyst was inspired by Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Diarist Project.
• Pre-Community Engagement: Setting the Stage for Authentic Community Engagement (January 2019) – a full Spark Report that lays out the pre-community engagement methodology and then tracks how it works using a South Phoenix-based case study. In the process, valuable learning about the community’s perspectives is revealed.

These reports owe greatly to the consultants and contributors whose efforts populate their pages. People – their unique histories, perspectives, experiences and designs for well-being – are the essence of civic participation, and will remain our guiding lights for this work.