Familias en Acción: Improving Health from Every Angle

A story from Health & Education Fund Impact Partner Familias en Acción.

Familias en Acción works to improve health through a variety of strategies, from teaching nutrition classes to advocating for policy change. 

For the past 20 years, Familias en Acción has educated Latino Oregonians about health and employed community health workers to support community members. They’ve addressed health issues such as domestic violence and breast cancer. Currently, they’re focused on preventing and managing chronic diseases.

Their programs emphasize the importance of health during the first 1000 days of life. They also recognize the intergenerational aspects of health. An ancestors’ poor or good health can trickle through generations. For example, if someone eats well and exercises, their future grandchild’s health will be better for it. This recognition led Familias en Acción to create their Abuela, Mamá y Yo! program.

In 2018, Familias en Acción developed a curriculum for their Abuela, Mamá y Yo! program. This curriculum is taught over four 2.5 hour sessions and covers topics ranging from gardening, traditional foods and breastfeeding to epigenetics and public policy. Familias en Acción made a goal of training 50 trainers to facilitate this curriculum across Oregon. By the end of September 2019, they’d trained 120 trainers. It’s clear there is a huge appetite for this information.

With funding from a Health & Education Fund capacity building grant, Familias en Acción also formed a community council made up of organization representatives, parents and future parents. They’ve accomplished an unbelievable amount in the last couple years.

Together, the community council has been learning about policy and advocacy. Through partnerships with Oregon Food Bank and Partners for a Hunger-free Oregon, they’ve learned about SNAP, WIC, school meals and food pantries. They partnered with Adelante Mujeres to hold a community forum, with lawyers present, about public charge. They participated in the 2019 May Day rally and march in Salem to support the Driver’s Licenses for All campaign, and they met with legislators to talk about food pantries and housing. They also participated in a CAPACES Leadership Institute training, spent time making and eating healthy, traditional meals together with local foods, and solicited people to sign postcards in support of multiple ballot measures. And they worked with Oregon’s Department of Human Services to visit their offices as “secret shoppers” and evaluate their performance.

This fall, the Health & Education Fund Partners approved Familias en Acción for an implementation grant. The increased amount of funding will allow them to continue ramping up their invaluable work. They plan to train more Abuela, Mamá y Yo! facilitators; teach Know Your Rights classes about eligibility, application processes, access and how to file a complaint around nutrition services such as SNAP, WIC, food pantries and school meals; and continue to engage in policy advocacy around issues that impact the health of the Latino community in Oregon. All this while simultaneously evaluating and improving their strategies.

You can thank Familias en Acción for improving health for all Oregonians. We certainly are!

Southern Oregon Parents Support Driver's Licenses for ALL and the Oregon Voting Rights Act

A story with Healthy Beginnings+Healthy Communities Collaborative Successful Transitions.

Spanish-speakers attend a Driver’s Licenses for ALL community forum in southern Oregon.

Kids do better in school and life when their parents are involved in their education and able to advocate for them. Due to language barriers, fear, and unfamiliarity with systems, immigrant parents often struggle to advocate for their children and families. That’s why Unite Oregon has been working closely with Southern Oregon Education Service District (SOESD) to engage and inform parents in SOESD’s migrant parent leadership program.

SOESD staff member Bianey Jiminez invited parents from the leadership program to attend Unite Oregon’s Driver’s Licenses for ALL Community Forum in Spanish on March 28. Almost 100 people turned out for the event. That’s where Unite Oregon staff began building relationships with these parents. 

Since the forum, Unite Oregon has helped the parents advocate for HB2015 (the Equal Access to Roads Act) and HB3310 (the Oregon Voting Rights Act). HB2015 would allow all Oregon residents, regardless of citizenship status, to obtain driver’s licenses after passing the required written and practical tests. This would allow undocumented immigrant parents to purchase car insurance and drive their children to school, the doctor or the park without fear of getting deported for driving without a license. HB3310 would allow Oregonians to challenge and offer solutions to discriminatory electoral methods. This could lead to more candidates of color winning school board, city and county elections.

Unite Oregon’s Bilingual Organizer Alessandra de la Torre coached parents on how to call their representatives and voice support for these two bills. She reassured undocumented parents that calling would not put them at risk.

Unite Oregon continues to welcome these parents to events like tenant rights trainings and citizenship classes. By talking to these parents over the phone or in person, they’ve gathered parents’ community concerns and visions, which contribute to an intercultural movement for justice.

The parents in the leadership program want to encourage other community members to take advantage of the resources and connections available to them. Although it might be uncomfortable, they emphasize that people need to empower themselves if they want change.

Learn more about the Equal Access to Roads Act and the Oregon Voting Rights Act, then call your legislators to voice your support!

Guiding Values: Partnership for Safety and Justice

The Kaiser Permanente Community Fund (KPCF) at Northwest Health Foundation was founded in 2004 with an initial $28 million investment by Kaiser Permanente to improve conditions for health. As we learned how to best partner with community organizations, we made pivotal decisions that changed how we operated. In this story, we tell how Partnership for Safety and Justice taught us the benefits of formalizing and articulating our approach with guiding values.

Partnership for Safety and Justice advocates walk through the hall at Oregon’s State Capitol during PSJ’s lobby day.

Brittney’s life didn’t look like the lives of most other children. Her parents were incarcerated for addiction-related harms, and Brittney was passed around from family members to friends to strangers. She lived out of a suitcase, was depressed, and would sometimes lie in bed all day without eating or talking, just worrying about her parents.

Brittney’s experience is common for children of incarcerated parents, who experience lower health-related quality of life than their peers. Children whose parents are incarcerated face higher rates of heart disease, depressive disorders, and drug use than children who do not have parents behind bars. That is why we see Oregon’s growing prison population as a health problem. From 2000 to 2010, Oregon’s prison population increased by nearly 50%, putting the health of both inmates and their families at risk.

“Originally, KPCF received applications from, and funded, more traditional public health organizations and projects. But what we really wanted to get at was the social determinants of health — factors like economic opportunity or early life — that are shown to set the stage for lifelong health,” said NWHF Director of Programs Jen Matheson. In the mid 2000s, even though we knew in our hearts that incarceration was a health problem, we didn’t have a mechanism for the Kaiser Permanente Community Fund to invest in solutions. We weren’t reaching out to organizations that worked on this issue, and they were not applying for our grants. Instead, we saw applications from traditional healthcare delivery, community health, or academic health programs.

So, we embarked on a rigorous process with our advisors to evaluate the fund and its impact. Through the evaluation, we learned that the organizations we felt were a good fit for the fund embraced a set of specific approaches.

We decided to further explore these approaches, articulate them as values, and use those values as filters to decide who to fund. Those values were:

• Social and Racial Equity

• Collaborative Partnerships

• Community-Driven Solutions, and

• Systems Change.

With our newly articulated guiding values, we could appeal to organizations that may not have previously seen their work as a fit for the fund. One of those groups was Partnership for Safety and Justice, which promotes a more effective approach to public safety that focuses on prevention and keeping people out of prison. Andy Ko, the executive director of Partnership for Safety and Justice said, “The fund’s values were consistent with what we wanted to achieve...They also expressed through their own priorities that they understood the intersectionality and the systems element of what we were trying to do.”

We funded Partnership for Safety and Justice to improve health in communities disproportionately involved in the criminal justice system. The organization wanted to pursue justice reinvestment, which would steer state funds away from prisons and into community-based programs that help people succeed outside of prison. These programs include services such as crime prevention, mental health and addiction treatment, and crime survivor services.

We first supported Partnership for Safety and Justice with two capacity building grants to lay the groundwork for a legislative campaign. We then gave them a three-year grant to implement the campaign, which successfully secured passage of the Justice Reinvestment Act in 2013. Then we offered the organization another three-year grant to monitor how the law was implemented.

As a result of Partnership for Safety and Justice and their partners advocating for community-based alternatives to prison, eleven Oregon counties decreased their prison usage rates. These counties put fewer people in prison than before the advocacy campaigns, and more than 6,000 people were able to return to their families and communities.

One of those people was Elizabeth. By the time Elizabeth was 30, she had experienced abusive relationships, struggled with addiction, and felt like she was in basic survival mode. She was jailed multiple times over two and half years, each time separated from her family and community. After her last time in jail, Elizabeth qualified for the community programs now offered because of the work of Partnership for Safety and Justice and their partners. Instead of being behind bars, Elizabeth returned to her children and, with the help of organizations in her community, overcame her addiction. Last year, she celebrated with her family when her daughter got accepted to Stanford University.

Stories like Brittney’s and Elizabeth’s show us how we can make bolder decisions to create healthy communities. Articulating our guiding values was a pivotal movement in the Kaiser Permanente Community Fund that created the structure to make those decisions possible.

Western States Center & CAPACES Network: Winning with Reproductive Justice

According to Western States Center’s Gender Justice Program Director Amy Casso, when you lead with Reproductive Justice you can win. Why? Because Reproductive Justice is intersectional and inclusive; everyone can see themselves in it. It also has the ability to shift narrative and culture in communities.

The CAPACES Network organizations, a group of primarily Latino-led and serving organizations in Oregon, saw an opportunity in Reproductive Justice. After participating in Western States Center’s We are BRAVE Cohort, CAPACES Network staff wanted to bring a Gender Justice and Reproductive Justice lens to all their work. They partnered with Western States Center to guide them through the process.

Over the last year, CAPACES Network executive directors and staff participated in monthly trainings and discussions around building and integrating a Gender and Reproductive Justice lens into their organizations’ program work. A pivotal moment came in August when many of them participated in Activists Mobilizing for Power 2017 workshops like “Talking About Abortion in the Latinx Community” and “Over-policed and Undervalued: reproductive justice, prison-abolition and birthing” to deepen their understanding.

CAPACES Network members also participated in the campaign to pass the Reproductive Health Equity Act, advocating for all Oregonians, regardless of income, citizenship status, gender identity or type of insurance, to have access to the full range of preventative reproductive health services.

Over the next year, Western States Center and CAPACES Network will conduct a community assessment in order to better understand the community’s concerns and needs, as well as identify opportunities for policy shifts. They’re working closely with several organizations, including both of the Network’s youth organizations, Latinos Unidos Siempre (LUS) and Talento Universitario Regresando a Nuestros Orígenes (TURNO).

It’s clear the partnership is already impacting community members. Western States Center recently hosted an event with Mujeres Luchadoras Progresistas, unrelated to their partnership with CAPACES Network. At the event, Amy Casso asked community members if they’d heard about the Reproductive Health Equity Act and what it could do for them. All of them had.

Ultimately, CAPACES Network hopes this partnership will result in a healthier community and healthier families.

Oregon Renters Lead the Way to Safe, Stable and Healthy Homes

Change should always be led by the people who will be most impacted by it. Solutions work better for everyone when they are created by the communities that need them the most. It’s the curb-cut effect.

For example, everyone in our region — Oregon and Southwest Washington — has been affected by the affordable housing crisis. Even homeowners feel the impact when neighbors, coworkers and employees, their children’s classmates, teachers, caregivers and countless other community members suffer the stress of housing instability. Housing instability impacts all of us. But who is most impacted? Who should lead the way in confronting this problem?

According to Community Alliance of Tenants (CAT), low-income tenants — mainly, people of color, families with children, low-wage workers, people with disabilities and seniors. Which is why CAT is partnering with a number of organizations to advance tenant protections this legislative session.

Across our region, increased demand for housing has led to rent hikes and no-cause evictions. Too many families find themselves houseless, priced out of their cities and towns, sleeping on friends’ couches, in cars and shelters, even on the street. Without a safe place to call home, they struggle to keep their jobs, feed their kids and get them to school.

Families who haven’t been evicted are too scared to ask their landlords for necessary repairs and improvements; they’re afraid of retaliation. Meanwhile, their children suffer from “slum housing disease” due to unhealthy living conditions.

Their fear is warranted. Families with small children, especially from immigrant and refugee communities face higher barriers to quality housing, and they’re more vulnerable to discrimination, retaliation and involuntary displacement.

CAT members, as well as their majority-tenant board of directors, identified no-cause evictions and lifting the ban on rent-stabilization as their top priorities. So CAT responded by convening the Stable Homes for Oregon Families Coalition, a group of over 75 organizations advocating for the 40% of Oregonians who rent their homes. CAT also initiated the Tenant Leadership Council, composed of parents of color to lead the #JustCauseBecause campaign this legislative session.

The Tenant Leadership Council spent time helping shape House Bill 2004, vetting it against their experiences, and mobilizing their fellow tenants to participate in various actions, including phone banking, visiting their legislators, hosting rallies and supporting civic engagement opportunities for renters. They also coordinated lobby days at the Oregon State Capitol and developed and presented testimony in support of the bill. On February 4, they packed a listening session with 250 people, and 20 legislators and their staff attended to hear residents from all over Oregon share their stories. On April 30, they plan to pack another listening session in Eugene. 

Thanks to the leadership of low-income Oregon tenants, we trust #JustCauseBecause and #RentStabilization are the best choices for our state. We may not end the affordable housing crisis with these two bills, but we will reduce stress and fear, mitigate displacement and ensure renters feel supported enough to demand healthy living conditions. And everyone in our region will benefit because of it.

Community Alliance of Tenants is one of Northwest Health Foundation's Kaiser Permanente Community Fund funded partners.

Youth Unite for Social Justice

A spotlight on Healthy Beginnings+Healthy Communities Collaborative Youth Equity Collaborative.

The Youth Equity Collaborative at the Oregon Students of Color Conference.

Youth voices often go unnoticed and unrecognized in social justice movements. Youth leaders are undervalued due to their "lack of experience." But, when it comes to youth, people are measuring experience the wrong way. Youth have plenty of experience – their own lived experience. Youth are their own experts.

The Youth Equity Collaborative, made up of youth-led social justice organizations, including Multnomah Youth Commission, Latino Unidos Siempre, CAPACES Leadership Institute, OPAL Environmental Justice Oregon's Youth Environmental Justice Alliance, Oregon Students of Color Coalition with Oregon Student Association and Momentum Alliance, values and prioritizes youth voices.

The Youth Equity Collaborative encourages collective youth action and including youth at decision making tables when the decisions will affect youth, because youth are capable of making change. 

Some of the challenges youth face are lack of affordable transportation, financial support and accommodations for their participation, as well as lack of opportunities. The Youth Equity Collaborative does its best to support our youth and aims to remove barriers by providing reimbursement for transportation, providing bust tickets and childcare as needed. They also provide opportunities for youth to explore, network and participate in leadership development by sending them to conferences, gatherings and lobby days.

Why did the organizations that are part of the Youth Equity Collaborative choose to join the Youth Equity Collaborative?

• To build relationships and network across organizations.
• To engage the community on a greater scale.
• To create a coherent and unified youth voice across the state.
• To learn and share effective organizational practices.
• To foster a support network for youth involved in social justice movements.

What has the Youth Equity Collaborative been doing lately?

• Building relationships, including meeting monthly, playing fun games and discussing what "our future looks like."
• Participating in the Oregon Students of Color Conference and Communities Collaborate gatherings and traveling together.
• Creating content for social media campaigns.
• Creating a political agenda.

Check Out Our Partners in Willamette Week's 2016 Give!Guide

It's giving season again, folks! That means Willamette Week's Give!Guide is collecting donations now through midnight on December 31st, with a goal of raising $3,600,000 total for 141 deserving Portland nonprofits.

Several of those 141 nonprofits are Northwest Health Foundation's past and current funded partners. We've highlighted five below! These community organizations are doing amazing work for our region, and they have earned every bit of support you can offer them.

Black Parent Initiative

What is Black Parent Initiative? Black Parent Initiative (BPI) is the only culturally specific organization in Portland focused solely on supporting parents as a vehicle for enhancing the lives of Black youth. It helps families achieve financial, educational and spiritual success.

How is NWHF supporting BPI? NWHF is currently funding BPI through the Kaiser Permanente Community Fund to engage low-income African American families in comprehensive home-visiting services.

Why should I give to them? Children are more likely to succeed in learning, life and realizing their dreams when supported by stable and engaged adults; and communities are more likely to succeed when they prepare their children to succeed. By supporting BPI, you support a vibrant, thriving Portland.

Community Alliance of Tenants

What is Community Alliance of Tenants? Community Alliance of Tenants (CAT) builds tenant power through education, advocacy, building-based organizing, leadership development and membership engagement.

How is NWHF supporting CAT? Last year NWHF supported CAT's Renter State of Emergency campaign.

Why should I give to them? Portland is in the midst of an affordable housing crisis, and renters are the people most impacted by it. CAT is on the front lines striving to protect renters through advocacy and legislation. In 2015, CAT's Renter State of Emergency prompted the City of Portland to declare a Housing State of Emergency. Now CAT is running a #JustCauseBecause campaign to protect tenants from no cause evictions. By giving to CAT, you contribute to all Oregonians having a stable place to live.

Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization

What is Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization? Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization (IRCO) promotes the integration of refugees, immigrants and the community at large into a self-sufficient, healthy and inclusive multi-ethnic society. Founded in 1976 by refugees for refugees, IRCO has nearly 40 years of history and experience working with Portland's refugee and immigrant communities.

How is NWHF supporting IRCO? IRCO is the lead organization for one of our Healthy Beginnings+Healthy Communities Collaboratives: Immigrant and Refugee Engage Project. 

Why should I give to them? Immigrants and refugees are a boon to our communities and our economy. Unfortunately, many of them now face the likelihood of unjust legislation by the new federal administration that will try to force many of them to leave their homes and lives in the U.S. By donating to IRCO, you support immigrants and refugees to adjust to American society, find jobs and advocate for themselves.  

Partnership for Safety and Justice

What is Partnership for Safety and Justice? Partnership for Safety and Justice (PSJ) works with people convicted of crime, survivors of crime, and the families of both to advocate for policies that make Oregon’s approach to public safety more effective and more just.

How is NWHF supporting PSJ? NWHF is funding PSJ, through the Kaiser Permanente Community Fund, to implement, refine and increase community understanding and support, evidence-based justification, and state-wide expansion of the Family Sentencing Alternative. (The Family Sentencing Alternative allows parents to stay with their children while serving their sentence under community supervision.)

Why should I give to them? Incarceration has a huge negative impact on a person's future, as well as on their family's. For example, children of prisoners are more likely to drop out of high school, abuse drugs and alcohol, become teenage parents, commit crimes, and become unemployed and/or homeless. By donating to PSJ, you help families overcome the obstacles of life after incarceration and prevent more kids from losing their parents to prison in the future.

Urban League of Portland

What is Urban League of Portland? Urban League of Portland (ULPDX) is one of the oldest African American service, civil rights and advocacy organizations in the Portland metro area. ULPDX’s mission is to empower African Americans and others to achieve equality in education, employment, health, economic security and quality of life.

How is NWHF supporting ULPDX? NWHF last funded ULPDX to convene community members to discuss priorities related to improving children's health and education.

Why should I support them? Oregon has a deeply embedded history of discrimination against African Americans. By giving to ULPDX, you contribute to dismantling racist systems and support programs that uplift the African American community.

Warm Springs Youth Build Power for Political Participation

A story from Healthy Beginnings+Healthy Communities Collaborative Let's Talk Diversity Coalition.

Photo courtesy of the Warm Springs Youth Council Facebook page. Photo credit to Jayson Smith.

[Image description: A candidate with a long braid and glasses speaks into a standing microphone. Three candidates sit behind.]

At the beginning of 2016, Let’s Talk Diversity Coalition and the Warm Springs Youth Council formed a partnership around voter education for the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs. Their first project was a candidate forum held in Warm Springs, Oregon on March 7th, 2016.

This forum gave local Tribal Council candidates running for the upcoming Warm Springs Tribal Council elections an opportunity to interact with the community and share their strengths, concerns and positions on issues the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs is facing. It also served to highlight the upcoming Bureau of Indian Affairs Secretarial Election and allowed tribal members, as well as the Warm Springs Youth Council, to raise and discuss thoughts about issues that would be on the Secretarial Election ballot. These included various proposed changes to the make-up of the Tribal Council and the process of electing Tribal Council members, as well as a proposed change to lower the voting age to 18.

Photo courtesy of Warm Springs Youth Council Facebook page.

[Image description: Six Warm Springs Youth Council members, wearing black t-shirts that read "BUILD COMMUNITY," pose around a Warm Springs Youth Council banner.]

In preparation for the forum, the Warm Springs Youth Council developed questions that incorporated the Secretarial Election’s proposed changes, history of the tribe, education and youth concerns. The forum was organized and hosted by the Youth Council with support from Let's Talk Diversity Coalition, Warm Springs Prevention Team and the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs. It was the first candidate forum to be organized in the history of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs.

Twenty-four hours before the event, the Youth Council contacted Let's Talk Diversity Coalition, requesting us to provide a sign language interpreter for the event. Thanks to regional and local connections, we were able to locate an interpreter for the event and pay him for his services. It's definitely worthwhile to build those relationships before they're needed! The community expressed appreciation of the interpretation services, not to mention the opportunity to hear from Tribal Council candidates.

Let's Talk Diversity Coalition continues to partner with the Warm Springs Youth Council and looks forward to the upcoming voter education collaborations, and to building power with our young leaders!

Keeping Vancouver Housed

Oregon and Southwest Washington are in the midst of a housing crisis. Over the last few years, the Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro metro area has been flooded with out-of-state movers. Market forces, including limited housing supply and stagnant wages, are making it hard for people to secure safe and affordable homes. Demand is so high, at the end of 2015 only 2.4% of rentals were vacant, and many people struggling to make ends meet were pushed out of their homes. Cities and community organizations endeavor to enact solutions to this problem. In Vancouver, a community has come together to build power and take concrete steps toward keeping people housed.

SUPPORTERS OF AN AFFORDABLE HOUSING LEVY TESTIFY IN FRONT OF VANCOUVER CITY COUNCIL ON JUNE 20, 2016.

[Image description: Three people dressed in red sit at a table facing Vancouver's City Council. The city councilors are seated at a long, semicircular desk, with each person's name on a plaque mounted in front of them.]

At the end of 2014, Courtyard Village, an apartment complex in Vancouver’s Rose Village neighborhood, which is known for housing people from vulnerable communities, was sold to a new owner. Tenants in the 151-unit complex began receiving 20-day notices to vacate. Families, singles, couples and seniors found themselves facing a housing crisis during the holiday season.

Also at the end of 2014, twenty-six Southwest Washington residents participated in Healthy Living Collaborative of Southwest Washington’s first Community Health Worker training program. Before even graduating the program, these community leaders made a huge impact in the lives of the people evicted from Rose Village, and they’ve continued to make an impact on the entire community through their advocacy for affordable housing.

When the 20-day notices to vacate were issued, many of Courtyard Village’s tenants didn’t even know the apartment complex had been sold. The Community Health Workers in training, some of whom lived in the Rose Village neighborhood, pulled together with Washington Elementary School and the Council for the Homeless to educate tenants about what was happening and connect them to resources. This included a community meeting where they learned about assistance finding housing, paying moving costs and support being offered by a neighboring church (Vancouver First United Methodist). It also included Community Health Workers going door to door to make sure every tenant, including those who had chronic conditions and no means of transportation, received the information they needed. Thanks to these efforts, 101 of the 151 Courtyard Village households contacted partners for assistance. The community stepped up with fundraising, too. The Vancouver community raised $102,000 to help households pay expenses associated with moving. There was a “fun run” and donations from individuals and businesses. In addition, many congregations held special offerings. This community-driven assistance helped 76 of the 101 households, including 89 children, secure new homes.

After responding to the Courtyard Village crisis and graduating from their training program in February 2015, the Community Health Workers were determined to prevent similar situations from happening again in the future. That meant policy change.

On September 14, 2015, Community Health Workers, Rose Village residents and others testified at a City of Vancouver hearing about a proposal for renter protections. Community Health Worker Dominique Horn testified as a Rose Village community member and Courtyard Village neighbor: “It doesn’t just affect them. It affects the whole community. It affects the school. It affects my children. It affects everyone. And there is nowhere for them to go.”

COMMUNITY HEALTH WORKER DOMINIQUE HORN TESTIFYING AT THE SEPTEMBER 14TH, 2015 VANCOUVER CITY COUNCIL MEETING. CLICK ON THE IMAGE AND FAST FORWARD TO 2:05 TO LISTEN TO DOMINIQUE'S POWERFUL TESTIMONY.

[Image description: Screenshot of a woman speaking into a microphone, people seated behind her. A caption at the bottom of the screen reads "Vancouver City Council, 9/14/15."]

After the hearing, Vancouver’s City Council approved three ordinances protecting vulnerable renters: one requiring landlords who wish to raise a tenant’s rent by ten percent or more to give a 45-day written notice of rent increase, one requiring landlords who own five or more rental units to give at least 60-days notice to vacate, and one preventing landlords from refusing to rent to a tenant based on a tenant’s source of income. This was a huge win for Community Health Workers, Rose Village tenants and the Vancouver community as a whole, but it still didn’t solve the problem of the lack of affordable housing.

That brings us to this week. Once again, on June 20, 2016, Vancouver residents packed the City Council Chambers, many of them wearing red. They wore red to show their support for an affordable housing levy. At a rate of 36 cents per $1,000 assessed property value, the levy would generate $6 million annually for seven years to be put toward low-income rental housing and homelessness prevention. Thanks to the turnout and testimony, City Council voted to add the levy to the November ballot.

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF HEALTHY LIVING COLLABORATIVE OF SOUTHWEST WASHINGTON KACHINA INMAN PRESENTS A CHECK TO THE BRING VANCOUVER HOME CAMPAIGN.

[Image description: Two women stand in front of a room full of people seated at tables covered with purple tablecloths. One of the women holds a large check. More people stand in front of a wall draped in purple and red.]

Policy measure by policy measure, Healthy Living Collaborative of Southwest Washington and its many partners work toward keeping community members in their homes. With 501(c)4 funding from Northwest Health Foundation's Healthy Beginnings+Healthy Communities initiative, Healthy Living Collaborative and its partners will be able to contribute dollars to a political campaign for the first time this year: the non-partisan campaign Bring Vancouver Home. They will continue to advocate for families and children in Southwest Washington to keep them housed and healthy.

Healthy Living Collaborative of Southwest Washington is the lead organization for Healthy Communities, Healthy Futures, a Healthy Beginnings+Healthy Communities Collaborative.

Cottage Grove Bans Smoking in Parks

According to a survey commissioned by Be Your Best Cottage Grove (a cross-sector coalition of community partners), residents of Cottage Grove, OR see drug and alcohol addictions as one of their greatest obstacles to becoming a healthy, vibrant community. Recently, this small, rural city in Lane County took steps to surmount that obstacle.

On November 9, 2015, the Cottage Grove City Council voted to ban smoking in parks. This ban includes not only paper cigarettes, but e-cigarettes and other inhalant deliver systems. By passing this law, Cottage Grove hopes to help people quit smoking and prevent kids from starting smoking by creating supportive, smoke-free environments and changing social norms.

Be Your Best used several different tactics to help get this law passed. They sent a letter of support for policies that prevent kids from becoming addicted to nicotine to the Cottage Grove City Council. Be Your Best members reached out to City Councilors directly to express support, and to community members to educate them about the policy and ask them to reach out to the City Council, too. They also testified at the City Council meeting.

Be Your Best Cottage Grove uses a collective impact approach to improve community health. Be Your Best partners include: United Way of Lane County, South Lane School District, PeaceHealth, Lane County Public Health, South Lane Mental Health, The Child Center, Family Relief Nursery, Sustainable Cottage Grove, Looking Glass Community Services, Parent Partnership and other businesses, civic partners and faith-based organizations.

By surveying and reaching out to community members, Be Your Best makes sure that the work they are doing reflects the community's wants and needs. By participating in policy advocacy, Be Your Best increases chances that change will be made in a broader and more-permanent way.

Be Your Best Cottage Grove is a Healthy Beginnings+Healthy Communities Organizing Grant partner.

Oregon's COFA Islanders are this close to winning health care coverage

A bill passed during the 2015 Legislative Session may finally lead to health coverage for many of Oregon's Pacific Islanders.

Citizens of Palau, the Marshall Islands and Micronesia, subject to a U.S. diplomatic act known as the Compact of Free Association (COFA), are allowed to live and work in the U.S. and join the U.S. military. They also pay taxes, yet they have severely limited access to Medicaid. This is a particularly heavy burden for COFA Islanders, as many suffer from chronic health conditions due to U.S. use of the COFA Islands as a nuclear test site in the mid-nineties.

This summer, COFA Alliance National Network (CANN), with support from the Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon (APANO) and other partners, organized to advocate for health coverage. They succeeded in raising awareness of the issue, convincing several Oregon legislators to champion their cause, and ushering House Bill 2522 through Congress. 

HB 2522, which was signed by Governor Kate Brown, directs the Oregon Department of Consumer and Business Services to begin designing a premium assistance program for COFA Islanders.

We're crossing our fingers for more definitive action during the short session in 2016!

Read more about this issue in the Portland Business Journal.

Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon is a Kaiser Permanente Community Fund funded partner. They are also a lead organizer of one of our Healthy Beginnings+Healthy Communities Collaboratives.

Highlands Neighborhood Association Hosts Awesome Advocacy Training

Highlands Neighborhood Association partnered with Habitat for Humanity to host a two-day Participatory Leadership & Advocacy Training at the Washington state capitol in June.

Representatives from 20 organizations attended, including a few of our Southwest Washington partners. Experts coached participants on the importance of community leadership and inclusion, and shared how to plan well-organized strategies and approach legislators for effective policy change. 

All we can say is, WOW! Props to Highlands Neighborhood Association. We love it when our community partners find ways to share skills with other organizations in their region. And we love it even more when they are building power for advocacy, leadership, organizing and policy change! This is how we will achieve better health for everyone in Oregon and Southwest Washington.

Highlands Neighborhood Association is the lead organization for Highlands Grows and Shares, an Organizing Grant Community funded by our Healthy Beginnings+Healthy Communities Initiative.

Fair Shot for All

This week we're celebrating the Fair Shot for All coalition, which saw four out of five of its priority bills pass during the 2015 Oregon legislative session!

All four bills are huge wins for hardworking Oregonians! All told, they require employers to offer their employees paid sick days, ban questions about criminal history on job applications, reform Oregon's retirement savings system, and increase law enforcement's accountability for profiling.

The best thing about Fair Shot for All? It is a coalition of community-led organizations! This means that the people who are most affected by these policies are the ones leading the effort to change them. When putting their agenda together, Fair Shot for All sat down with employers and businesses, as well as employees, to talk about how this legislation could work for them. Fair Shot for All put time and thought into creating an agenda that all Oregonians could benefit from, and it shows in their success.

Fair Shot for All includes several of our past and current partners: Family Forward Oregon, Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon, Basic Rights Oregon, CAUSA, Oregon Action, Partnership for Safety and Justice, PCUN, the Urban League of Portland, VOZ Workers’ Rights and more.

Fair Shot for All is funded in part by the Kaiser Permanente Community Fund at Northwest Health Foundation through a grant awarded to Family Forward Oregon. 

Moving the Health Care Constituency

OSPIRG is a 35-year old advocacy organization, with a full-time legislative presence at the capitol, tens of thousands of members across Oregon, and an online activist network of thousands of people.

In 2009, OSPIRG collaborated with Oregonians for Health Security (OHS), a leading voice in healthcare advocacy in Oregon, to split a one-year, $40,000 grant. The funding enabled the two groups to reach out to 30,000 Oregonians at community events, on the phone, online, and through media – all in an effort to mobilize support for a legislative bill to improve access to health care for all Oregonians.

Influenced by this, and fifteen other healthcare advocacy efforts funded by the Foundation, the Oregon Legislature passed two bills that are expected to cover 95% of Oregon’s uninsured children and extend coverage to an additional 35,000 low-income adults while instituting a reformed model of healthcare delivery for Oregonians.

“This may be the most important piece of legislation that we pass out of this building this session. This is a good deal for Oregon,” said Senator Alan Bates (D-Ashland).

Friends of Public Health in Coos County

County public health agencies throughout Oregon are struggling to deliver vital services, especially in rural counties hit hardest by the recession, and the recent loss in dedicated federal timber revenues.

In Coos County, volunteers actually collected spare change for childhood immunizations—just one of the ways a local non-profit group raised close to $10,000 for the county health department. The funds plugged holes in key services and kept Coos County commissioners from handing over public health services to state government.

Now, officials across Oregon and in other parts of the country are paying attention to how this rural coastal county created this non-profit, modeled after Friends of the Library, to educate the general public and raise money for the health department.

When the idea to start a non-profit came to Frances Smith, Coos County Public Health administrator, and Molly Ford, a retired public health educator, it made perfect sense. They called the new organization, for which Ford serves as president, Coos County Friends of Public Health.

“Local service clubs are limited to funding non-profit 501(c)3 organizations,” Smith said. “I’ve been trying to argue that a government-run health department is also a non-profit —  it’s a public non-profit.”

Northwest Health Foundation (NWHF) is proud to have helped draft the organization’s by-laws, and to have organized several meetings with board members to help clarify the organization’s goals and complete legal paperwork. The first annual meeting of the Friends was held on January 16, 2008, and by-laws were approved and officers were elected. 

NWHF also helped support a local ballot measure initiated by the Friends of Coos County Public Health in 2008. The measure would “impose $450,000 each year for three years to fund operational costs of County Public Health Department beginning in 2009 (which could) cause property taxes to increase more than three percent.”

Although the measure didn’t pass, Coos County Commissioner Kevin Stufflebean was optimistic. “It was supported by more voters than any other ballot initiative last year,” he said.

He tipped his hat to the non-profit. “Had it not been for their help and support we would have been in severe trouble last year.”

“You hear how important healthcare is,” Stufflebean said. “But you don’t hear anybody talking about the public health system, which is an essential backbone to individuals in poverty.”