Posts Tagged ‘Allina Health Systems’
First Anniversary, New Director, Commission on Health
by Janice Barbee The Backyard Initiative, a partnership between Allina and the surrounding community, will be celebrating its first anniversary on January 30, 2010. Come to the Cultural Wellness Center to hear about the accomplishments of the past year and plans for 2010. The Backyard Initiative”'s assessment process is already producing a great deal of knowledge. Community residents have conducted 21 Listening Circles, the notes from which are now being analyzed by residents. They will create a report for the community and Allina that will be presented at the January meeting. The walk-around is now over 1/3 completed. Community residents hired by Wilder Research are walking around the Powderhorn Park, Central, and Corcoran and the four Phillips neighborhoods to ask people about their health and the health of the community. Residents designed the questions and they will be interpreting the results. The great majority of residents have been interested in participating, [...]
16 residents will interview 750 households door-to-door by year”'s end
By Janice Barbee The Backyard Initiative”'s Community Interviews are now happening in the Phillips Community and in Powderhorn Park, Central, and Corcoran neighborhoods. Over the past several months, community residents have been meeting weekly as part of the Backyard Initiative”'s Assessment Team. The Assessment Team has been charged by the larger BYI community group that meets monthly to oversee the process of creating a picture of the current state of health and well-being of the residents and families in the Backyard area. Early on in the process, the community had given feedback to Allina that they did not think that a proposed mail survey would be an effective and accurate method for assessing the health of people who live in the Backyard area. They decided that a better process would be to hold a number of Listening Circles where people would give their input in groups, and a Walk-around process where people would be asked questions about their health in a [...]
Now Begins the Process of Staying Together
Update on the Backyard Initiative Many of the Allina Backyard Initiative participants are describing the process of community engagement as “trustworthy”,” “deeply instructive,” “nurturing,” “Informative” and completely surprising. The Process Since December of 2008 there have been 11 dinner dialogue gatherings. Each gathering has held the attention of 28 ”“ 70 people of various ages. The youngest is 6 years old and the oldest is a 74 year old resident. The 74 year old resident told the story of organizing the residents in his apartment building after being so inspired by the knowledge gained while attending 8 of the 11 dinner meetings and participating on the very active Assessment Team. He left one of the Assessment meetings fired up. He had seen several drug dealers on the block where he lived. He was feeling frustrated and angry because as he stated, “no one was doing anything” suddenly he realized [...]
