Olympic Community of Health (OCH) is a Washington state-funded Accountable Community of Health that aims to improve population health in its three-county region by fostering collaboration among partners from multiple sectors and area Tribes. OCH recently engaged Collaborative Consulting to look at how adverse social conditions across their region impact health and explore opportunities for region-wide, collaborative interventions.
Working with OCH, our team conducted an environmental scan, reviewing existing research, surveying partners, and taking stock of available data to establish a broad understanding of adverse social conditions impacting community health in the OCH region. We also identified 75 multi-partner initiatives from around the country focused on improving social conditions — ultimately profiling 25 of them in detail — to identify common partnership structures, strategies, funding mechanisms, and outcomes that could potentially be adapted for and adopted in the Olympic region. You can access this complete report on the OCH website or by clicking the download button at the top of this post.
We then facilitated three virtual convenings, bringing together 72 local leaders and community members from Clallam, Jefferson, and Kitsap Counties in the Olympic region to discuss the learnings and gauge interest in activating a response to identified needs. Convening participants represented a diverse collection of organizations, Tribes, and communities including health care providers, community-based organizations and social services from state, county, private, and non-profit coalitions and agencies.
Our joint report, Transforming & Advancing the Social Determinants of Health in the Olympic Region, summarizes our work and captures key findings. Additionally, the OCH website links to resources and materials that contributed to the final report and the Highlights summary published by OCH.
This work produced a consensus around the need for a region-wide strategy to comprehensively address adverse social conditions impacting health, and a shared commitment by OCH participating partners to begin planning and pursuing a number of regional health initiatives in the coming months.
If you would like learn more about how your organization can better understand the factors impacting population health in your area, get in touch.
Lori launched Collaborative Consulting in 2010. With experience in the healthcare industry and a psychology and organizational development background, Lori’s focus areas include cross-sector partnership development, multi-stakeholder initiative design and facilitation, and change activation and implementation.
