Health Equity Network grantees
African Growers and Producers Alliance (AGAPA)
Grantee home location: Isanti County
Project area: Metro region
African Growers and Producers Alliance (AGAPA) will connect African farmers in Minnesota to one another, the land, community and through cultural farming. Connect AGAPA aims to increase the number of African farmers through community meet and greet events, sharing cultural significant seeds and plants, create a health equity council. Insights into the health inequities related to farming or not farming/gardening in Minnesota will be collected and shared. Project designed on advancing relationship identities and community health stories among African Immigrant farmers. Includes leadership and capacity building trainings.
Annex Teen Clinic
Grantee home location: Hennepin County
Project area: Hennepin County
The Annex Teen Clinic will strengthen our organizational capacity to advance health equity through deepening community-based hiring and promotion pathways, investing in professional development for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) leadership within our organization, and ensuring Annex staff are up to date on health equity best practices. Utilizing knowledge and skills gained, we will convene community storytelling and listening sessions which will inform the design of a Health Equity Professional Development Training Series. This series will address gaps in the current training ecosystem by providing a practical framework for living boldly within personal and organizational values and increasing positive health outcomes through experiences of joy. The series will strengthen healthcare practitioners’ and public health professionals’ ability to advance health equity practices and positively impact BIPOC youth in Hennepin County.
Care Resource Connection
Grantee home location: Wright County
Project area: Metro region
Care Resource Connection will develop and facilitate a series of monthly community health forums to help identify Trusted Community Messengers in Anoka County. These messengers will brainstorm, identify, and plan strategies and efforts to increase health equity amongst their respective communities. The goal of this project is to collaboratively address health inequities and connect and educate partnering agencies with community leaders from migrant communities, immigrant communities, aging populations, the LGBTQIA+ community, and various diverse religious and race identifiers. Creating a Health Equity Data Analysis focused on barriers to accessing primary care, social determinants of health for this geographic area and the factors of health equity therein, for any and all populations who face health inequities. Extend the use of Community Health Workers to embed with numerous fire and public safety agencies within our Community Health Model to address health equity in targeted populations. Includes cultural competency and implicit bias training components.
Carlton-Cook-Lake-St. Louis Community Health Board
Grantee home location: Saint Louis County
Project area: Bois Forte Band of Chippewa, Carlton County, Cook County, Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Lake County, Saint Louis County
The Carlton-Cook-Lake-St. Louis Community Health Board will partner with a data equity firm to provide a regional, cross-sector data equity training. Partners invited to the training include local public health, tribal public health, school staff, healthcare workers, academic partners, coalition members, and more. This training will provide knowledge and shared language for community partnerships to embed data equity principles into new and existing work. More equitable data can lead to more equitable data-driven decision making. Regional staff will continue conversations around data equity with local public health and partners. Regional partners will also participate in data equity coaching sessions that will apply the data equity framework to our largest regional health survey.
Center for Victims of Torture
Grantee home location: Ramsey County
Project area: Saint Cloud, Stearns County
Goal: Working to address inequitable health systems access for the Somali community in St. Cloud through language-accessible community listening sessions and informational media. Center for Victims of Torture (CVT) St. Cloud, in partnership with Stearns County Public Health Department, will host language-accessible community listening sessions moderated by CVT staff where Somali community members can freely communicate to CVT St. Cloud and the county health department barriers they face in accessing healthcare and other community health services, as well as proposed steps to increase accessibility. Resulting information will be used by both CVT St. Cloud and Stearns County Health Department to inform future programming to ensure systemic health inequities are addressed. Where appropriate, CVT St. Cloud will develop and release Somali-language media programming to quickly address health access and equity concerns brought by the community at listening sessions. This work will center community voices and needs while illuminating barriers to health equity, which will allow CVT St. Cloud and Stearns County Health Department to begin appropriately adapting programming to address these inequities going forward.
Clay County (part of Partnership4Health Community Health Board)
Grantee home location: Clay County
Project area: Moorhead
Goal: To implement strategies of "Inclusive Moorhead" that build health equity through relationship building, community healing, community navigators, community education and conducting a substance use health equity assessment. Clay County Public Health will work to build health equity through Inclusive Moorhead, a program of Resilient Moorhead. Digital storytelling and Inclusive Moorhead community engagement will deepen relationships and promote healing among and between diverse people. Providing training on positive community norms will support organizational capacity to create change by focusing on the science of the positive. Community Navigators will expand access to services for New Americans. A Health Equity Data Assessment focused on substance use disorder will identify problematic community conditions and identify opportunities for change.
Comunidades Organizando el Poder y la Accion Latina (COPAL)
Grantee home location: Hennepin County
Project area: Mankato, Minneapolis, Rochester
Comunidades Organizando el Poder y la Accion Latina (COPAL) will use relationship and confidence-building strategies with communities across the state to increase health equity among Latines. Central to this effort, COPAL will enlist and train local, respected community leaders to become Promotoras de Salud (“Health Promoters”) who will discuss COVID-19 and influenza prevention measures and vaccination benefits with families. COPAL’s diverse communication platforms will serve to amplify the messaging of Promotoras and local health experts to get accurate epidemiological information to Spanish-speaking Minnesotans. Create a community health committee with community leaders from the areas we serve. These efforts will focus on decreasing health disparities felt most acutely by Latines and other Minnesotans of color and will be concentrated in the Twin Cities, Mankato, Rochester, and the surrounding areas.
Don’t Call Me Josephine
Grantee home location: Crookston
Project area: Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, Polk County, northwest region
Don’t Call Me Josephine (and the Respecting Voice Collaborative) will engage Native and non-Native community in the evaluation of recently completed talking circles about safety; centering Native voice in the portion of Anishinaabe territory known as Northern Minnesota. Don’t Call Me Josephine is partnering with Tribal members from Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, as well as Polk County Public Health, and a range of additional community partners to re-engage Native and non-Native community in the development and evaluation of “Respecting Voice” tools, resources, and programming. In 2022, our original team responded to a regional call to center feminine voice, when addressing environmental safety. Following an equitable decision-making process, the recently expanded team is now re-engaging community, and emphasizing Native voice in the evaluation of the 2022 conversations, which evolved into a series of talking circles. These circles were designed with Anishinaabe Elder guidance. This same guide is now leading the incorporation of Indigenous methods for evaluating our talking circles. Non-Native voice (e.g., Latinx, Asian, Black, and White) is being intentionally included, as we consider the intersections of our communities; where we started, where we’ve been, and how we might move towards conciliation. A second Anishinaabe Elder is leading the recording of our digital story, which will be shared broadly. The story will review the historical context of Respecting Voice, follow its evolution, and consider its future, as directed by community voice, and highlighting Native voice. Both Native and non-Native community from the surrounding regions will be invited to join a hands-on and culturally informed conversation, guided by the digital story. Individuals, families, and professionals will explore the ways in which safety was monitored, during our talking circles, according to emotional experiences and respect; and consider possible applications to their own work and lives.
Duluth Area Family YMCA
Grantee home location: Saint Louis County
Project area: Southern Saint Louis County
The Duluth Area Family YMCA will embed a Community Health Worker who is strengthening relationships with community partners, connecting individuals and families to external health and well-being resources, reviewing operating procedures through an equity lens, and increasing the visibility and accessibility of free community health programming FOR ALL. This work includes increasing the knowledge and use of a new online resource system that will allow individuals and advocates to easily find local well-being resources across the region. Through this work, historically marginalized communities will be able to improve their overall health and well-being in a manner that benefits them on a personal level.
Ecolibrium3
Grantee home location: Saint Louis County
Project area: Duluth
The Lincoln Park Social Determinants of Health (LNPK SDOH) project builds upon a one-year planning process co-led by St. Louis County Public Health and the community-based organization Ecolibrium3 in Duluth, MN, to address the extreme health disparities in the Lincoln Park neighborhood. The project expands partnerships and tools recommended by the LNPK 156 Social Determinants of Health Accelerator Plan in the domains of equitable transportation, food access, social connectedness, healthy housing, and community-clinic linkages. Key activities include a community summit, integration of community voices into street design, launching of anti-displacement conversations, and development of resource navigation to assist in healthy and resilient home improvements.
Hmong Shaman & Herb Center
Grantee home location: Ramsey County
Project area: Duluth, Rochester, Willmar, Twin Cities Metro Area
The Hmong Shaman & Herb Center will: Develop shaman and shamanistic practices into mainstream healthcare practices in order to address inequities amongst the Hmong population. Examine system structures, policies, practices, along with Hmong American community’s Concept of HEALTH, cultural norms and values, in order to create an inclusive social and physical environments that recognize the Hmong Cultural Healers playing a key role in promoting good health for all people and communities. Reach Hmong elderlies through enhanced COVID response and education efforts around vaccination and vaccine hesitancy. Hmong Seniors focus groups in partnership with public health partners. Pop-up vaccination clinics at Hmong Senior Centers. Develop Hmong Cultural Healer Circle (HCHC) to connect and build capacities among Hmong Shaman and Herbalists to engage with public health entities at the local, regional and state levels.
Horizon Public Health
Grantee home location: Alexandria
Project area: Douglas, Grant, Pope, Stevens, and Traverse counties
Horizon Public Health will strengthen and build community relationships by cultivating and attracting new partners, creating organizational strategic partnerships, and including and engaging people with lived experience to form solutions for health disparities. Horizon will intentionally connect with populations most impacted by health inequities and will include them in planning and conversations to improve the factors that influence health for all community members. Horizon Public Health will also strengthen internal capacity to be a leader and catalyst for health equity work across the five-county service area. Health equity consultants will conduct an Organizational Equity Assessment, facilitate community listening sessions, support and implement health equity trainings/activities for all Horizon Public Health team members, and support the preparation to become a designated Inclusive Workforce Employer (I-WE) through collaboration with the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development and the Regional Workforce Alliance.
Human Services of Faribault-Martin Counties
Grantee home location: Martin County
Project area: Faribault and Martin counties
Human Services of Faribault & Martin Counties in collaboration with Minnesota State University, Mankato Department of Applied Health Science and the Center for Rural Behavioral Health will work jointly to strengthen understanding of poverty among our agencies, our local community partners and the future public health workforce. The goal is to increase awareness of the systemic challenges that foster poverty and create barriers for individuals to obtain supports. We will host Bridges out of Poverty trainings that examine poverty at the individual, institutional and community/policy lens. We will collect data to develop an agency Health Equity plan so we can embed learnings into practice and reduce barriers for persons experiencing poverty.
Meeker-McLeod-Sibley Community Health Services
Grantee home location: Meeker County
Project area: Meeker, McLeod, and Sibley counties
Meeker-McLeod-Sibley Community Health Services is collecting data from underrepresented populations, educating the public on social determinants of health, and developing networks for shared community involvement to advance health equity. The tri-county region is conducting surveys with the local Hispanic community to gather information on current health behaviors and analyzing trend data. Community education and workshop will build knowledge around the social determinants of health. The workshop will be used as an additional tool to deepen a networking system across the area and facilitate conversations and collaborations between local organizations, businesses, community, and populations experiencing health inequities. Working collaboratively in cross-sectoral jurisdictions to increase shared resources and information will also lead to greater capacities in advocacy and change on a local level for addressing health equity and fostering trust and support.
Minneapolis Health Department
Grantee home location: Minneapolis
Project area: Minneapolis and surrounding area
Goal: Co-imagine, co-create, and build dynamic community spaces for queer and trans health equity. The Minneapolis Health Department (MHD) will partner with local community organization, Our Space, to co-imagine, co-create, and strategize to build dynamic community spaces for queer, trans, and LGBTQIA+ folks specifically centering BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) folks. One of MHD’s values is to invest in a healthier and more equitable community while exercising leadership in public health. We will achieve this by creating the infrastructure and relationship with local communities as they pioneer their health equity stories and journey. By working with communities in facilitating conversations and strategizing to create a common operating model and data and information picture (often desired, but missing, when having conversations of health equity and public health), this project will serve as a seed and nexus for future health equity work between the city of Minneapolis and the queer and trans community of Minneapolis, and greater Minnesota.
Minnesota Community Health Worker Alliance
Grantee home location: Hennepin County
Project area: Statewide
The Minnesota Community Health Worker (CHW) Alliance (the Alliance) will connect and strengthen the health equity network the Alliance has already established. Project activities include connecting the Alliance with the Regional Health Equity Networks, Minnesota Community Health Boards and Minnesota Tribes. The Alliance will also undergo a Health Equity Organizational Assessment and a strategic planning process, enhance the website as a clearinghouse for CHW strategies and continue to work to integrate CHW positions across Minnesota.
Morrison-Todd-Wadena Community Health Board
Grantee home location: Morrison County
Project area: Morrison, Todd, Wadena counties
The Morrison-Todd-Wadena Community Health Board (MTW CHB) is implementing a health equity organizational self-assessment utilizing the toolkit developed by the Bay Area Regional Health Inequities Initiative. This assessment will look at health equity within our community health board and include a staff survey, collaborating partner survey and focus groups to identify a baseline measure of staff capacity, skills, and areas for improvement. Using the assessment results, the MTW CHB will revise its strategic plan and develop strategies to advance and embed health equity practices and principles throughout our community health board.
Nobles County Community Services
Grantee home location: Nobles County
Project area: Nobles County
A diverse group of Community Stakeholders are convening monthly to engage in transformative work based upon a SOAR (Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations, and Results) analysis that further inspires community member engagement and heightens awareness to health equity issues. Based upon the SOAR analysis, top priority areas will be selected in order to address barriers to disparities within our communities. Broader understanding of disparities will be obtained through presentations by individuals currently facing health equities and other relevant topics by subject matter experts.
Olmsted County Public Health Services
Grantee home location: Rochester
Project area: Olmsted County
Olmsted County is committed to continuing to understand, identify and address institutional and systemic barriers that may impede access to opportunities for successful community health. In 2020-2021, a county-wide food security assessment was conducted to better understand the strengths and opportunities in the community regarding access to food. The assessment unearthed many findings, but the number one recommendation from the assessment was to create a county-side food security coalition, thus the Olmsted County Food Security Coalition was created. Funding will be used to support a professional facilitator to build a solid foundation for this new coalition. One Olmsted, Olmsted County’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) countywide initiative, is working with a design team consisting of eight community members representing lived experience of county services and programs. The design team’s goal is to help form the structure and future goals of a new One-Olmsted Community Council. The community co-design engagement process is type of human-centered design to create opportunities and structure for shared decision-making. Olmsted County will implement the co-design engagement process to give voice to those with lived experience on future initiatives focused on youth mental health and cultural liaisons in the parks.
Power of People Leadership Institute (POPLI)
Grantee home location: Hennepin County
Project area: Hennepin County, metro region
Increase awareness and provide health and wellness information and COVID-19 vaccinations to the African American Community through our POP-UP Wellness Villages. Engage junior and senior high students across the Twin Cities in culturally sensitive health and wellness discussions and COVID -19 informational sessions. Create and disseminate social media and traditional media messages to educate the African Community, and the community at large about health disparities and the importance of getting vaccinated as a way to protect your health and your community.
Regents of the University of Minnesota – University of Minnesota Youth & AIDS Projects
Grantee home location: Hennepin County
Project area: Seven-county metro area
Develop a Community Advisory Board to Harness Community Expertise at the Youth and AIDS Projects (YAP). YAP aims to develop a Community Advisory Board with membership from people who represent the communities YAP serves: communities of color, those impacted by HIV, and/or members of the queer community. The Community Advisory Board will provide guidance and feedback on YAP programming to ensure that YAP’s services are youth-centered, focused on community advocacy and collaboration, and ensure YAP’s sustainability and growth. The Community Advisory Board harnesses community expertise and resilience to identify and mitigate structural and social barriers that foster unequal health outcomes for marginalized groups and works toward EHDI goals by granting more agency and autonomy to communities who experience the greatest risk of HIV, while at the same time providing a formal infrastructure for youth living with HIV to participate in decision-making that affects their healthcare.
Rice County Public Health
Grantee home location: Faribault
Project area: Rice County
Rice County Public Health will connect with trusted community members to co-create a Health Equity Advisory and Leadership (HEAL) Council. The long-term goal of the council is to advance health equity. The council will work on identifying formal and informal communication channels used by our populations most impacted by health inequities so that Rice County Public Health can shift our messaging and outreach to better reach the public. In doing this work we will be adding one Community Health Worker who is bilingual in Somali and English. This individual will be a member on the HEAL Council. To strengthen our community’s understanding of the value of this work, we will contract with our local community health center to offer community seminars on implicit bias and health inequities.
Somali Community Resettlement Services of Olmsted County
Grantee home location: Hennepin County
Project area: Hennepin, Olmsted, Rice counties
Somali Community Resettlement Services of Olmsted County (SCRS) will find and establish relationships with home- and community-based services (HCBS) service providers in Hennepin, Rice, and Olmsted counties who can provide culturally specific care and resources for elders, persons with disabilities, and their care providers in the East African community. Improve quality of connections and relationships between clients and medical practitioners through cultural awareness education & accessing needed resources. We will publish and distribute a provider listing in native languages within the community through walk-in service requests at our office in Minneapolis, Faribault, and Rochester, as well as distribute these resources at public forums held monthly at local mosques.
Southwest Health and Human Services
Grantee home location: Marshall
Project area: Lincoln, Lyon, Murray, Pipestone, Redwood, and Rock counties
Goal: Expansion of Cultures on the Prairie event to include an additional day of training. The Cultures on the Prairie has been focused on sharing stories and experiences of those with diverse backgrounds in our communities. The additional content will include a simulation titled “Killing Fields,” giving participants the opportunity to recognize the experiences of the Cambodian survivors who resettled in Southern Minnesota. Partner with Wilder Research to conduct focus groups with specific populations in our community. The goal will be to better understand populations that historically have greater health inequities. Focus groups will be conducted with the following: Somali, Hmong, Latinex, Karen, American Indian, LGBTQI+, as well as persons with physical/mental challenges. Will hold poverty training workshops in an effort to create an understanding of the dynamics that cause and maintain poverty from the individual to systems level. Goal is to provide a workshop for up to 100 community leaders, providing concrete tools and strategies to alleviate poverty; including incorporating a training certification for those interested in providing the training on an ongoing basis.
Winona Health Foundation
Grantee home location: Winona County
Project area: Winona County
Winona Community HUB (the HUB) is a collaborative, community-based care coordination program certified by the Pathways Community HUB Institute (PCHI). The HUB, which serves Winona County residents, leverages the skills of community health workers housed within community-based organizations to find and engage residents who are under-resourced and at greatest risk for poor health outcomes. The goals of the HUB's work via the Health Equity Network Grant includes: 1. Increase the cultural competency of the HUB Network to better serve the immigrant and refugee communities of Winona County; and 2. Increase engagement with the refugee and immigrant communities to serve more individuals and families via the HUB, thereby addressing health disparities and improving health equity. The work includes seven cultural competency training sessions, consultation, translation of key program materials, interpretation services, and outreach sessions for refugees and immigrants in Winona County, all under contract with Project FINE (Focus on Integrating Newcomers through Education).