Our world is ever-changing. We need to strengthen our capacity to succeed.
Over the next ten years SLHI chooses to consciously adopt, model and promote the principles of resilience – the remarkable capacity of individuals and communities to bounce back from adversity and even thrive in a world of change.

We’re starting with what we have, not what we lack.
This is literally Health in a New Key. It’s a way of identifying, framing and responding to issues that focuses first on existing strengths and assets. Importantly, it honors the value of what’s already good about a situation, and avoids the pervasive culture and model of deficits and needs.

Looking with new eyes, we discover new solutions.
Health in a New Key is both an acknowledgement of how we’ve worked previously and an exciting new journey to more thoroughly achieve our mission with powerful new tools and insights. Connect with us. Learn with us. Succeed with us, as we work to improve our effectiveness as a catalyst for community health.

Health in a New Key Goals

• To support strength-based community development and capacity building, and to demonstrate its power to improve practice and outcomes in community health.
• To reinforce, support and extend a culture of proactive community health and resilience in Arizona.

Health in a New Key Outcomes

• Improved community health and well-being.
• Increased levels of civic participation.
• Stronger and more pervasive formal/informal community networks focused on improving health outcomes.
• More robust community service and support systems.
• Strong community leadership and engagement at all levels. A greater sense of optimism in a proactive approach to community development and planning.

In the Standard Key
Health proceeds through diagnosis and treatment based on science, evidence and best practices. Illness, pathology, needs and deficiencies are identified. Treatment and services are provided. Patients and communities are “restored” to health.

In a New Key
Health is the harmonious integration of mind, body and spirit within a responsive community. Diagnosis and treatment, yes, but the focus shifts to strengths and assets first, not just deficits.

Join Us on the Road Ahead

Together we can

• Counter the model of deficits and needs with the model of assets and opportunities
• Extend strong ties to new contributors
• Turn loose ties into strong ones
• Share knowledge and create practice networks
• Pollinate grassroots community organizing, development and advocacy

Let’s talk about

• How to increase the resilience of our health care system
  – access, information and integration
• How to promote individual and community resilience
  – community-based connections and projects

Learn more with our Health in a New Key Pocket Guide and our Resilience: Health in a New Key issue brief.

Current Community Partnerships
In November 2005, SLHI awarded nine partnership grants to promote and extend the principles and strategies of strength-based community development and resilience. Learn more about our Partnership and Explorer grants in the navigation bar at the right.