Community partnering for behavioral health equity: Public agency and community leaders’ views of its promise and challenge

Individual Author(s) / Organizational Author
Bromley, Elizabeth
Figueroa, Chantal
Castillo, Enrico G.
Kadkhoda, Farbod
Chung, Bowen
Miranda, Jeanne
Menon, Kumar
Whittington, Yolanda
Jones, Felica
Wells, Kenneth B.
Kataoka, Sheryl H.
Publisher
PubMed Central
Date
September 2018
Publication
Ethnicity & Disease
Abstract / Description

Objective: To understand potential for multi-sector partnerships among community-based organizations and publicly funded health systems to implement health improvement strategies that advance health equity.

Design: Key stakeholder interviewing during HNI planning and early implementation to elicit perceptions of multi-sector partnerships and innovations required for partnerships to achieve system transformation and health equity.

Setting: In 2014, the Los Angeles County (LAC) Board of Supervisors approved the Health Neighborhood Initiative (HNI) that aims to: 1) improve coordination of health services for behavioral health clients across safety-net providers within neighborhoods; and 2) address social determinants of health through community-driven, public agency sponsored partnerships with community-based organizations.

Participants: Twenty-five semi-structured interviews with 49 leaders from LAC health systems, community-based organizations; and payers.

Results: Leaders perceived partnerships within and beyond health systems as transformative in their potential to: improve access, value, and efficiency; align priorities of safety-net systems and communities; and harness the power of communities to impact health. Leaders identified trust as critical to success in partnerships but named lack of time for relationship-building, limitations in service capacity, and questions about sustainability as barriers to trust-building. Leaders described the need for procedural innovations within health systems that would support equitable partnerships including innovations that would increase transparency and normalize information exchange, share agenda-setting and decision-making power with partners, and institutionalize partnering through training and accountability.

Conclusions: Leaders described improving procedural justice in public agencies’ relationships with communities as key to effective partnering for health equity. (author abstract) 

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Artifact Type
Research
Reference Type
Journal Article
P4HE Authored
No
Topic Area
Policy and Practice