Resilience Catalysts

 

Resilience Catalysts in Public Health

Resilience Catalysts logo, orange tree with people outreaching as branches.Leading Public Health 3.0: Reducing and eliminating adversity by fostering equity through policy, practice and program change to build resilience.

Using the novel Community Resilience (CR) framework developed at GW, health departments across the country are convening multiple sectors to manage and deliver resources that contribute to a community’s health and wellbeing.

Operating as Chief Health Strategists, local health departments are Resilience Catalysts, driving initiatives that address the Pair of ACEs. Resilience Catalysts foster integration of cross-sector and community services and community-wide prevention by leveraging a public health approach to address the Pair of ACEs, injury prevention, and the impact of structural racism on community characteristics, such as homelessness, juvenile incarceration rates and educational attainment.

The first cohort of Resilience Catalyst network partners was launched in 2019 and includes Mesa County, CO; Louisville, KY; Cambridge, MA; and Appalachian District, NC. In 2020, we launched a second cohort that includes Alameda County, CA; Baltimore City, MD; Leon County, FL; Shelby County, TN; and Tacoma-Pierce County, WA. In 2021, we welcomed a third cohort including Deschutes County, OR; Jersey City, NJ; Lee County, IA; and Cleveland, OH. Acting as Chief Health Strategists, each local health department and their community partners develop a system dynamics model to address ACEs through a unique local lens.

Map indicating 12 Resilience Catalysts sites across the United States and CCR’s two national partners: NACCHO and APHA.

Learn more about the sites

  • Mesa County, CO
    Building social cohesion by identifying the drivers in community environments that underpin poor health outcomes to disadvantaged populations.
    View the Mesa County fact sheet (PDF)

  • Louisville, KY
    Reducing disparities in evictions by investing in quality, affordable housing by developing supportive policies for renters and grounding the work in local data and context analysis.
    View the Louisville fact sheet (PDF)

  • Cambridge, MA
    Reducing suicide rates among young men of color.
    View the Cambridge fact sheet (PDF).

  • Appalachian District, NC
    Understanding historical trauma in rural Appalachia to address the drivers/systems that lead to disparate health outcomes, inequitable employment opportunities and housing policies that stunt economic mobility.
    View the Appalachian District fact sheet (PDF)

  • Alameda County, CA
    Exploring community context and systemic drivers that lead to gun violence.

  • Baltimore City, MD
    Disrupting cycles of trauma that underpin city wide violence by investing in youth and increasing community supports to healthy food access, affordable housing, and employment opportunities with a living wage.

  • Leon County, FL
    Reducing the Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed (ALICE) population by examining disproportionate economic impacts of community development that give rise to food insecurity and inequitable housing cost burden.

  • Shelby County, TN
    Reducing community violence by focusing on school resource allocation, income inequality, and changing the narrative of violence as a social norm.

  • Tacoma-Pierce County, WA
    Transforming conditions in Black, Brown, Indigenous, and other communities of color ongoingly impacted by racism and experiencing trauma through school disciplinary actions, higher rates of infant mortality, and higher rates of violence due to inequitable economies.

  • Deschutes County, OR

  • Jersey City, NJ

  • Lee County, IA

  • Cleveland, OH