The Intersections Initiative brings together coalitions from seven California communities served by Providence St. Joseph Health System hospitals with the goal of advancing health equity by addressing the community conditions that shape health outcomes. The fund and its partner, Prevention Institute, have been working together since 2016 to better understand the challenges and opportunities for hospitals and their partners to intentionally pursue upstream causes of, and solutions to, community-level health problems.
Centered around those learnings and with hospitals as a partner, convener, and key strategist, the Intersections Initiative has invested resources toward collaborative “forming and storming,” encouraging coalitions to deeply consider the continuum of social needs and social determinants and identify approaches that build resilience for communities as a whole. Success for this three-year, $4 million initiative will be embodied by the strengthened capacity of community-based organizations and stakeholders to serve as advocates and champions of health equity.
Community Approaches
In Sonoma, partners came together to form the Sonoma Intersections Coalition, with Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital (the local Providence St. Joseph Hospital) serving as the backbone. The coalition recognized that low housing inventory was only one of the obstacles making it harder for residents to find affordable housing. Income inequality and past involvement with the criminal justice system were obstacles for some residents as well. Their comprehensive approach to addressing these factors includes support for policy measures that would take questions about past conviction status off of applications and make it illegal to discriminate based on source of income. Additionally, the coalition is training key decision makers to take trauma into account in policy making, especially related to housing.
Across the state of California, Intersections sites are building their bench of partners to address multiple determinants of health and to understand how strategies that affect one determinant can support other determinants. In the arid desert of Victorville and Adelanto, St. Mary Medical Center is working closely with community partners to strengthen local school decision-making processes, so that they include the voices of students and parents and can support better educational outcomes. Simultaneously, partners are considering how economic development opportunities can prioritize existing residents in benefitting from new and emerging jobs. With the potential of a stronger local workforce and jobs with which to connect residents, the partnership is also working to embed equity principles in new housing development plans to discourage displacement of families who have a longstanding presence in the region.
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