The Backyard Initiative is a community partnership to improve the health and health care of the community. The Alley Newspaper will be publishing a special insert on the Backyard Initiative in the May edition. We invite you to join us for a special event to meet your neighbors and distribute the insert throughout the Backyard*. Thursday, May 6 5 to 7 p.m. Midtown Global Market Food and brief program before distribution begins Thank you incentives for all volunteers To RSVP: Please call the Cultural Wellness Center at 612-721-5745 *
by Janice Barbee, Cultural Wellness Center & Paula Fynboh, Allina Health System
Join a BYI Citizen Health Action Team (CHAT)
The Backyard Initiative has moved to a new phase. Community residents who live in the Backyard area (the Phillips neighborhoods, Central, Powderhorn Park, and Corcoran) are now meeting twice a month to develop projects that improve the health of residents. We want to involve more community residents in this work. If you have an interest in working with your neighbors on a health-improvement project, and/or if you have a great idea to bring to the dialogue, please join us.
CHATs now meeting:
1. Rebirthing Community: Bringing Elders and Youth Together: Focused on bringing elders and youth together for a “rebirthing” of community. The team has discussed mentoring and visual arts as a way to bring the generations together.
2. Establishing Anchor Families: Seeking to establish “anchor families” on each block who can teach life skills and guiding values to youth as well as connect youth and their families to resources for wellness.
3. Mapping: Identifying the services that exist in the Backyard area which treat sickness and also those that prevent sickness.
4. Â LGBT: Working to connect individuals from all cultures who are LGBT with the resources they need to be healthy and safe.
5. Â Food and Nutrition: Focusing on finding ways to support healthy eating though accessibility to healthy foods and educating about healthy practices across cultures.
6. Dakota Language Revitalization: Keeping Dakota language and life ways alive and vibrant in the Dakota community.
7.  Alternative/Traditional Medicine: Educating community about natural and ancient ways to be healthy and well and connecting people to so-called ”˜alternative”' health practitioners for healing and wellness purposes.
8. Environmental: Looking at the impact of environment on the health of residents in the Backyard.
9. Communications/Media: Working to lessen or eliminate the divide between people who have information and those who don”'t so that everyone has the opportunity to be engaged in a healthy community.
10. Â Organizational Leadership: Working with building bridges between the many organizations serving residents in the Backyard area and beyond.
11. Â Healthcare: Looking to identify ways to maximize preventative care and to personalize health care delivery.
12. Â Assessment/Analysis Team: Developed the assessment process and will continue to guide data analysis and the utilization of the data.
The CHATs are meeting twice a month to develop their project. Part of the meeting involves getting training on such topics as mapping, budgeting, and evaluation. These projects will be presented to the Community Commission on Health in the next few months. The Commission, which has members from each CHAT, will chose projects that will be funded either though the Commission”'s budget and/or though other sources.
Save the date! The next CHAT meeting is Tuesday, March 23, from 7 ”“ 9 PM at the Cultural Wellness Center, 1527 East Lake Street. Please call 612-721-5745 for more information.
The BYI Health Assessment Report
As this edition of the Alley goes to print, the Backyard Initiative is in the midst of finalizing the full report for the community health assessment. The full report will include the findings and recommendations from both the 21 Listening Circles, as well as the walk-around survey of 676 community residents. The Backyard assessment reached over 1,000 residents, or every one out of 22 households in the Backyard.
The Community Commission on Health and the CHATs will be studying the results from the full assessment process to insure that the projects coming out of the CHATs will address the state of health and the concerns of the Backyard residents.
The full assessment results will be shared with the Backyard community through the following events and activities:
- On Thursday, April 29 from 5 to 7 p.m., Allina and the Cultural Wellness Center will host a community meeting to share the assessment results, as well as the progress the partnership has made over the last year. The event will be held in Pettingill Hall at the Allina Commons Building.
- Also, the Alley newspaper will be publishing a special 4-page insert on the Backyard Initiative in our May edition. On Thursday, May 6 from 5 to 7 p.m., the Backyard Community Commission of Health will be organizing an event to distribute the insert door-to-door within the Backyard. Backyard residents are encouraged to participate!
Please mark your calendars for these upcoming events. Details on both events will be available soon.
The CHAT projects build on the definition of health as developed by the community residents:
- Health is a state of physical, mental, social, and spiritual well-being.
- Health is the state of balance, harmony, and connectedness within and between many systems ”“ the body, the family, the community, the environment, and culture.
- Health is an active state of being; people must be active participants to be healthy.
