On Friday May 8, Kanwarpal Dhaliwal, Associate Director of RYSE Youth Center in Richmond, CA, joined the Better Normal series to describe the West Contra Costa Covid Community Care rapid response network.
This coalition includes stakeholders from multiple sectors of that county, working together to ensure this community's needs are met as the Shelter in Place orders disrupted employment and access to human assistance programs offered by county government and community based organizations.
A partial list of Covid Community Care network members includes: RYSE, Raise the Roof Coalition, CoCo Kids, La Clinica de La Raza, John Muir Hospital, First Five Contra Costa County, Contra Costa County Probation and DA offices, and City of Richmond (multiple departments).
This coalition helped launch the Richmond Rapid Response Fund which supports these efforts. Kanwarpal states, "This fund is born out of the Coalition’s work and efforts – a fund created through community centered engagement". See the city press release about the fund here.
Kanwarpal discusses how the coalition came together rapidly in the early days of the shutdown, and quickly mobilized to provide supports throughout the county. As Kanwarpal shared, the ability of these stakeholders to work together acknowledges that "the capacity and commitment of our community to come together has always been there. This current moment propelled us to come together, and it will be our relationships with each other that move us through disruption to transformation".
This level of collaboration needs to continue past the pandemic crisis, in their county and in counties nationwide, in order to address the "political determinants of health" that impact lives every day. Participants on the call asked thoughtful questions and shared enlightening perspective on the efforts in their local communities.
To learn more, view the slides from Kanwarpal's presentation (attached), and be sure to check out the recording of the call here.
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