Creative strategies to engage diverse communities in service design and delivery

The City of Minneapolis Department of Health and Family Support and its Urban Health Agenda Community Advisory Committee have piloted storytelling as a new process of engaging communities to inform the Department's policy and programmatic work.   Intergenerational health storytelling events were completed and videotaped from Dec 2006-June 2007 in the following communities:  African American, American Indian, Caucasian, Hmong, Latino, Somali & Vietnamese.  The primary focus of the events was to tell us about a time when participants' family/community were healthy.  During this session we will show a portion of a DVD which will describe the unique process we utilized to gather health information from the communities.  We will highlight the need to focus on and support family and culturally-based efforts to strengthen and improve the community's health.

This innovative approach was initiated and designed by our Committee members who are trusted members of their respective communities. Their involvement as equal partners was instrumental to the success of this pilot project. As a result of this work, we are working to change the individual health/health care paradigm to a family-based one.  There were 6 common themes identified by the communities.  These themes make it clear that health is grounded in connection to family and culture-a concept not easily accomodated in the current individually-focused health system.  Presentations at 3 statewide conferences have been well received by public health and health service providers.  The new knowledge we have gained in utilizing this unique process has generated interest among our statewide colleagues in applying this effort within their local communities.

One challenge we believed we would experience was skeptism from health professionals who primarily work with quantitative research methods.  So far, this has not been the case.  By co-presenting this work with a panel of our diverse community partners, they have effectively helped to illustrate the differences among themselves and how one size may not fit all.  Another challenge we faced was interpreting the findings from the storytelling events.  The way we overcame this challenge was to do this with our community advisors.  

When trusted community partners and open-minded health professionals work as equal partners, we believe utilizing health storytelling to collect health information at a local level is an effective process which can be replicated in many locations. Our community partners have told us that we all have a role to play in achieving optimal health for all.  It is not just a role for Health Departments and health professionals.