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Hennepin County > Projects and initiatives > Community health improvement partnership

Community health improvement partnership

Hennepin County Community Health Improvement Partnership (CHIP) uses a collaborative approach to improving people’s health.

  • Read a brief summary the program (PDF)

CHIP coordinator, Karen Nikolai

karen.nikolai@hennepin.us

Phone: 952-224-6630

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CHIP community commitments

Envisioning a healthier Hennepin County

Priorities for 2019–2023

Community mental well-being

  • Become trauma informed agencies and organizations
  • Support spiritual/faith/cultural leaders to respond to trauma in their communities

Housing stability

  • Reduce housing barriers for prospective tenants and residents of rental communities
  • Support community led initiatives in rental communities that increase social connectedness

To identify community driven solutions that address these priorities, CHIP intentionally seeks to partner with community-based organizations. CHIP believes that this is the best way to create shared power and ownership toward positive policy and practice change in our agencies.

CHIP has two action teams, one for each priority. These teams focus on activities to reverse health and racial inequities. Teams meet monthly and have smaller teams that move work forward as needed. An executive committee of core partner organizations coordinates CHIP’s overall work and is accountable for our outcomes.

We’d love to have you join us! For more information, please contact Karen Nikolai at karen.nikolai@hennepin.us.

CHIP’s commitment to health and racial equity

Health and racial equity are at the core of our work. Because of this, we will focus on the ways structural and institutional racism and also bias, impact outcomes for people of color. We will use a racial equity lens to focus our intent, which will bring us all to a shared understanding, language, and definitions on race and bias as we catalyze and carry out our work.

CHIP principles

CHIP’s Executive Committee engaged in small and large group conversations over two months in 2018 to formulate principles that the partnership now uses to guide all planning and execution of its work. These principles are below.

Guiding principles

  1. We understand that racism is at the core of racial and economic disparities, and the systems that perpetuate these inequities must be dismantled.
  2. We recognize the harm our systems have caused, and we will shift our organizations’ business decisions to prevent harm.
  3. We will listen as communities define their own goals, then partner with them to achieve shared success.
  4. We will act collectively upstream, harnessing the power and resources of this partnership to create equitable processes, policies, and collaborations.

CHIP purpose

CHIP fosters alliances across public and private organizations to target important community health issues together for greater impact.

Most factors that impact health, like housing, go beyond the purview of most healthcare organizations. So CHIP consists of a broad group that brings these perspectives to the table.

CHIP roles

Convene

We bring different sectors and organizations together to move toward action.

Catalyze and collaborate

We learn from experts and impacted communities, align interests and resources, and act toward mutual goals to move the dial on community mental well-being and housing stability.

Advocate

We get to shared decision-making and action with people who don’t traditionally have a voice and advocate for change together with them.

Adopt policies

We lead policy change within partner organizations, and work externally with political bodies to adopt policies that move the dial on disparities related to CHIP’s priorities.

Use data, including health/racial equity data

Data will help inform (but not drive) our direction, decisions and actions, and will be used to measure progress and outcomes.

View the printable copy of CHIP commitments (PDF).

CHIP's current work

Current CHIP executive committee members and their associated organizations (DOCX)

CHIP committee structure (PDF)

CHIP executive committee key informant interviews report (PDF)

CHIP Plan (PDF)

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