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May I Have This Dance?
By Lorin Wakefield, Youth Development Specialist
| Being a facilitator often can feel like a group dance. You must stay in step with the music the group is following, but also sense when the group needs to pick up the tempo, slow it down, change the rhythm or the music or just pause and reevaluate. You need to gauge when it's best to lead, and when to follow. Sometimes you can be caught off guard, and the dance collapses into disunity or chaos. Other times, it’s as if everyone is connected to one another and moving in perfect harmony. | As facilitators, official and unofficial, we all have our own style or groove as we convene others for meetings, workgroups, trainings, or other gatherings. For this writing, I have been thinking about how we all can grow as facilitators or conveners. In other words, how we can take our dances to the next level. | While the meeting might be the place where you get to show off your facilitation dance moves, much of the real work starts before then. It takes dedicated time to plan, design and build the environment you want to invite people to, be it a large formal meetings or smaller gatherings. | So what does it look like to intentionally create this space? Start with the “why”. | In my experience, If you can start with a clear “why” for the reason you are asking people to come together, it will help you structure the ideal environment. Often, when we consider purpose we focus more on “what” we are doing instead of “why” we are doing it. A strong purpose should be specific about why folks are gathering, and what you hope to accomplish. If you don’t dig deep enough into the purpose it will be harder to design the gathering. For example, a purpose that is more focused on the “what” might be “to brainstorm possible solutions to problem xyz.” Not a bad purpose, but not quite clear enough to inform the design in a meaningful way. A purpose that is more focused on the “why” might sound like “to unearth the different perspectives and experiences of diverse partners to brainstorm creative solutions to problem xyz.” With the second, it is clearer why we were bringing people together. This clarity changes the design of the meeting to more than just brainstorming. It indicates that diverse partners must be invited, and the meeting design should encourage sharing perspectives and experiences. The second example helps with making decisions about what to focus on, how to design the meeting and who should be invited. | Beyond a clear purpose, it is also helpful to define what outcomes you want to accomplish. Do you need to make a decision, brainstorm ideas, share updates or create recommendations? Once you know what you want to accomplish, you can work backward to design the meeting to reach that goal. For example, if the desired outcome is to share updates with the entire team for people to review, then it might not be a meeting you are designing but an email to inform others. The clear purpose and desired outcomes will shape the “what” to plan for and design for in the meeting or gathering. | While I know that we might not be able to be completely clear about our purpose and outcomes for every gathering or meeting, we get invited to far too many dances. I hope this information helps us all be more intentional and improve our own facilitation practices. | Happy dancing everyone and wishing you all the space to flow! | |
Want support, resources, or to just nerd out about facilitation and design, connect with me!
Lorin Wakefield, lorin.wakefield@state.co.us
| Looking for more ways to improve your gatherings, check out the book, The Art of the Gathering by Priya Parker! Make sure to check out these useful tools too: The New Rules of Gathering (The New Rules of Gathering Checklist) and A Guide for Hosting Hybrid Gatherings. Many of the ideas shared here were inspired by Priya’s resources! |
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New Brief on Behavioral Health Workforce
Are you interested in ways to support mental health in schools? If you have built (or are looking to build) partnerships with schools and districts in your area, there is helpful information to share with them.
In partnership with CDPHE, the Colorado Alliance for School Health (CASH) wants to share a brief on the behavioral health workforce. If you know school staff or administrators who may have questions about the roles that behavioral health staff can have in schools, or are currently looking to hire new behavioral health staff, please share it with them.
There is also information in the linked CASH workforce brief (pg 5) about funding streams that may be relevant to school administrators.
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2024 Health Links Webinar Series
Join us for our upcoming webinar series! We're covering highly-requested topics ranging from psychological preparedness to ageism in the workplace.
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Bills related to MCH will be covered here and the tracker will be updated as more bills are introduced
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The project involves a thorough analysis of data on AANHPI communities by extracting richer information from existing datasets, using a technique called disaggregation. Through disaggregation, we can see beyond the “Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders” label and learn about people in Colorado who identify as Chamorro, Japanese, Hmong, Nepali, Samoan, or any of the dozens of other AANHPI ethnic groups who call Colorado home.
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As part of their MCH work in the priority of Access to Supports, Garfield County Public Health convenes an Accessibility and Inclusion Charter Group (AICP). Last year, this group hosted a listening session in their community and developed strategic priorities based on what they heard. As part of this strategic plan, AICP recently hosted a Walk Audit Facilitator training in partnership with the CDPHE built environment team to learn to conduct walk audits in the county. A walk audit is a systematic assessment of the pedestrian safety, accessibility, and comfort of a particular area.
As part of their first set of audits, AICP hopes to bring together a diverse set of community members to share their experiences when traversing Glenwood Springs to highlight various mobility issues. This includes the CYSHCN population and their families/caregivers. For example, the group would like to see streets and curbs up to current ADA code, have a roadway system that is human-centric and not an afterthought, and empower community members to engage in advocacy using data. AICP hopes the audits will elicit further discussions and systems change around accessibility and inclusion in the community.
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Equity 2.0 - Targeted Universalism Learning Journey | In December 2023 Melissa Leal (moving upstream strategic anchor lead) began sharing learnings about targeted universalism (TU). Last month we began to take a deeper dive into the action steps of the TU framework, which we will continue for the next few months. | |
Deeper Dive: Targeted Universalism Stages
- Co-create a universal goal.
- Assess the general population’s performance relative to the universal goal.
- Assess all segment groups’ performance relative to the universal goal and situatedness.
- Assess and understand the structures and systems that support or impede each group from achieving the universal goal.
- Develop and implement targeted strategies so all groups reach the universal goal.
- Develop bridging stories and messaging that support strategies.
- Conduct ongoing evaluation/measurement of impact relative to the universal goal.
The assessment steps after co-creating a universal goal are where we can most clearly see the departure from the disparity framework that we often use in public health. In steps two and three, data is used to identify structural barriers to the universal goal.1
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Process1
- Who is the general population?
- Are there existing data sources?
- Can you access existing data?
- Is the data representative of the general population?
- Determine what the data is reflecting.
- Consult people with lived experience.
- Develop analysis.
- Which segment groups will you measure?
- Can existing data be disaggregated by segment groups?
- Determine what the data is reflecting.
- Consult people with lived experience.
- Develop analysis.
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Reminders1
- Co-creation is essential throughout the process.
- The focus of these analyses is the distance from the universal goal, not distances between segment groups.
- After measurement, determine if the universal goal needs to be revised/refined.
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Issues1
- We know that the process of data collection is itself a part of systems that have bias so the quantity and quality of the data may not be sufficient to move forward in the TU process. Additional work may be required to gather data that is representative of the population and able to be disaggregated. If the necessary data does not exist, it is important to work with the co-creation group to come up with a way forward. If a qualitative or less rigorous quantitative approach is chosen, be transparent about the limitations of the data.
| 1 “Measuring the General Population & Segment Groups’ Distances from the Universal Goal” by Seed Collaborative, December 2023 | Come back next month to continue diving deeper into the next action step of the TU framework. Please reach out to Melissa Leal with any questions about targeted universalism, moving upstream, or change management. | |
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The Title V Maternal and Child Health Program (MCH) works with statewide partners and local public health agency representatives to improve the health of Coloradans using population-based and infrastructure-building strategies. Our mission is to optimize the health and well-being of mothers and children by employing primary prevention and early intervention public health strategies.
This project is supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under the Colorado Maternal and Child Health Block Grant 6 B04MC45202. This information or content and conclusions are those of the author and should not be construed as the official position or policy of, nor should any endorsements be inferred by HRSA, HHS or the U.S. Government.
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