The Community Health Improvement Partnership, or “CHIP” for short, was established in 2012 on the idea that solutions to complex health issues can be found when partners from across the community work as one. Our partners come from the public, private, and nonprofit sections and include public health agencies, healthcare organizations, housing developers and providers, schools, human services, and more. We prioritize community health issues together for greater impact. This is called "collective impact".
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
- Partner with rental communities to support social connectedness.
To identify community driven solutions that address these priorities, CHIP intentionally lifts up community voices and organizations. CHIP also awards funds to communities when available and provided over $275,000 to 85 community-led projects across the county between 2020 and 2022.
CHIP action teams meet monthly and include people from healthcare, housing, community, faith, and school-based organizations as well as school districts and other groups working to support those impacted by health and racial disparities in cultural, spiritual, faith-based and/or geographic communities within Hennepin County. 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 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
- We understand that racism is at the core of racial and economic disparities, and the systems that perpetuate these inequities must be dismantled.
- We recognize the harm our systems have caused, and we will shift our organizations’ business decisions to prevent harm.
- We will listen as communities define their own goals, then partner with them to achieve shared success.
- We will act collectively upstream, harnessing the power and resources of this partnership to create equitable processes, policies, and collaborations.
CHIP roles
Convene
Bring different sectors, organizations, and communities together toward action.
Catalyze and collaborate
Support and learn from people in cultural, spiritual, faith-based and/or geographic communities, especially Black, Indigenous, people of color, to align interests and resources, and act toward mutual goals to move the dial on community mental well-being and housing stability.
Advocate
Share decision-making and action with communities who don’t traditionally have a voice and advocate for change together with them.
Adopt policies
Lead policy change within partner organizations, and work with political bodies to adopt policies and practices 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.