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: Bring different sectors and organizations together to move toward action
• Catalyze and collaborate: 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: Get to shared decision-making and action with people who don’t traditionally have a voice. Advocate for change together with them
• Adopt policies: 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

About CHIP printable PDF

About CHIP print version (PDF)

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

CHIP executive committee key informant interviews report (PDF)

CHIP Plan (PDF)

CHIP 1.0 final report (PDF)

CHIP 2017 Community Health Assessment (PDF 14MB)

CHIP Plan 2012-2015 (PDF)

• The 2012-2015 Community Health Improvement Plan for Hennepin County Residents – a summary of the results of the 2012 planning process and the targeted strategic health goals

Appendix 1: Participants (PDF)

• CHIP leadership group, forum participants, and survey participants

Appendix 2: The MAPP process details (PDF)

• Overview of the MAPP process and how it was used in this planning process. Includes tables of summary information from the CHIP forum discussions and survey, characteristics of a healthy community and themes, and SWOT (strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) and Forces of Change discussions.

Appendix 3A: Data details (PDF)

• 3.A.1. Hennepin Public Health Data website information
• 3.A.2. 2012 CHIP survey questions and summary results
• 3.A.3. Data PowerPoints from the CHIP forums 1 & 3
• 3.A.4. Key findings from the 2010 SHAPE adult survey
• 3.A.5. Key findings from the 2010 SHAPE child survey
• 3.A.6. List of Community Health Assessment Indicator fact sheets from the Hennepin Public Health Data website

Appendix 3B: Indicator fact sheets (PDF)

• Indicator fact sheets with data available during the 2012 CHIP process
• CHIP planning data: provides links to the various data sources accessed for the community health assessment and data work for this process.

Public health data

• This site provides links to information the results of the community health assessment.