There has been a paucity of research on health outcomes among Asian-Americans and even more scarcity investigating vulnerable groups such as refugee Asian-Americans. This year’s winner of the Health Equity Award, Dr. Tsu-Yin Wu, is helping to close that gap.
The All-America City Awards do not honor perfection because there is no perfect community, but when residents come together to put their various perspectives, skills and resources to use, even the most intractable of problems seem less daunting.
A new publication called “Springboard” offers a practical resource to help this country heal after a traumatic year and secure the vital conditions that all people and places need to thrive: a thriving natural world, basic needs for health and safety, humane housing, meaningful work and wealth, lifelong learning, reliable transportation, and belonging and civic muscle.
New immigrants have a lot to learn and a lot to contribute to their communities, but they need opportunity and support. Adult schools are an ideal venue for building their confidence, connections, and civic engagement.
The Model City Charter has guided thousands of American localities in their efforts to draft or revise their home rule charters by emphasizing “three e’s” of effectiveness, efficiency, and economy. A new edition should also provide language on two new e’s: equity and engagement.
A new term in the lexicon of American democracy, “civic muscle” functions in at least two different modes—by mobilizing people and resources to effect social change and by fostering community resilience and stability.
Professional collaboration with communities on a wicked problem like the opioid epidemic is a sensible approach, but too often it means teamwork and cross-disciplinary communication without much more than symbolic attempts to work with citizens. Coproduction, by contrast, is where citizens have a co-equal role.
Like other “wicked problems,” public engagement can be best understood by identifying the underlying values from multiple perspectives, recognizing the natural tensions between those values, and then focusing on how to best negotiate those tensions through an ongoing collaborative process.
