Here is the May 2011 Talking Points Newsletter, focusing on Mental Wellbeing! Lots of great videos and information. What do you think of the videos? What does mental wellbeing mean to you? How can we best support mental wellbeing here in Rice County? We want to know your thoughts!

March’s Talking Points Newsletter is about Asthma, Air Quality, and Health, thanks to a wonderful group of Carleton students, professors, and the ACE office.

In the Zoom Out: All about Asthma, socio-economic status is presented as an environmental factor which can aggravate or increase the likelihood of developing asthma. This relates to where people may live, how regularly they may visit the doctor, or how much chronic stress exists in their lives.

For this blog conversation, it seems interesting to consider how else financial stability and status might effect one’s health. The Unnatural Causes film series talks a great deal about how poverty negatively impacts one’s health. In thinking of your day-to-day life and the things you need in your life to feel well, how else do you think that poverty impacts health? Where are these issues of poverty addressed in our Rice County community? How could further understanding the relationship between poverty and health impact our healthcare system?

Please comment and discuss!

Check out the February 2011 Growing Up Healthy newsletter, Talking Points, here!

Many thanks to Carleton students Emily and Terry for their wonderful contributions to this month’s conversation about affordable housing. There are lots of interesting resources and information, so be sure to check it out!

According to the Center for Housing Policy, the research affiliate of the National Housing Conference, affordable housing can have a positive impact on the health of families and communities. Exploring hypotheses around this relationship, the CHP has looked at ideas ranging from the money that is freed up for other health promoting expenses when housing is affordable to the stress reduction and self-esteem boosting which results from the availability of stable, quality housing. This Zoom Out explores mobile or manufactured homes as affordable housing and the challenges that mobile home parks face in being seen as a vital part of a community.

All Parks Alliance for Change is a non-profit tenants union for residents of Minnesota’s manufactured mobile home parks. In their fact sheet, they detail just how prevalent mobile home parks are in Minnesota. There are over 900 licensed parks housing almost 180,000 individuals, with about 80% of these residents (144,000 people) identified as low- to very-low income. 15% of homes in Minnesota are mobile homes, and there are more units of affordable housing in manufactured home parks (48,700) than there are HUD subsidized units (36,000) and Rural Development units (12,400) combined. Despite what the term “mobile home” implies, 42% of residents have lived in their home for over 10 years, implying the tie that mobile home residents have to their communities. And yet there are many challenges faced by members of manufactured home communities in actually being a part of the broader community.

In many cases, mobile home park residents own only their home and not the land on which they live, and so are vulnerable should a park need to close. In addition, a Consumers Union report indicates that “Most manufactured homes are financed using a personal property loan like a car or a couch. Consumers who finance their home with a personal property loan (also known as a chattel mortgage) do not have foreclosure protections similar to those available for real property home mortgages.” And, as Julie Trnka discusses in her video, the perception of trailer parks as homes for “trailer trash”—the implication being people who do not contribute to a community and are not a real part of their community—and thus not “worthy” of being a part of a neighborhood. Stigma and stereotypes and prejudice must surely negatively affect the health of mobile home park residents and accordingly the health of the whole community.

What is a home but a place where a family is trying to make it work? What is a community but people coming together to build a life together? Manufactured home parks and their residents are a valuable and important part of any community. How do you see the mobile home communities in your neighborhood? If you take pride in your community, you must care for your community—all of your community.

As was discussed in our August Newsletter, how to make Northfield a more welcoming community has been an important and ongoing discussion over the last several months.

On December 14, 2010, the Northfield City Council approved a contract to work with Growing Up Healthy to create the LINK Center, a center located at the Human Services entrance of the Northfield Community Resource Center (NCRC) which will serve to welcome all community members, new and established, by linking people with resources and opportunities they might need throughout Northfield.

Work on the development of the LINK Center has already begun, and now we are looking for people who can staff the LINK Center Desk during the week!

Please apply to be a part of this exciting initiative by clicking here. Below is some additional information about the position, and If you have any more questions about the position, please contact Mary Ho at mkmho@hotmail.com.

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Hours of work:  LINK Center resource desk staff will work several three to four hour shifts per week, for a total of not more than 20 hours per week.  Most work hours will be between the hours of 9:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m., weekdays and Saturday.

Primary duties and responsibilities:

• Answer questions from the public regarding local resources and how to access services, using print and internet-based materials
• Record information regarding contacts and referrals
• As requested, maintain communication with LINK Center Coordinator and other GUH partners
• Follow GUH requirements for confidentiality and data privacy

Required experience and abilities:

• Experience working with the public in person and by phone
• Ability to interact positively with members of the public
• Knowledge of Northfield/Rice County resources, especially health and social service
• Computer skills sufficient to send and receive electronic mail, find information on the internet, and print documents
• Experience working a multicultural environment
• Preference will be given to candidates who can speak, understand, and read both Spanish and English

Reimbursement:  $9.00/hour

Check out the December GUH newsletter about collaboration here!

Collaborations come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and sectors. The most commonly cited definition of collaboration comes from Professor Barbara Gray of Penn State from her well-discussed text Collaborating: Finding Common Ground for Multiparty Problems. Collaboration is defined as “a process through which parties who see different aspects of a problem can constructively explore their differences and search for solutions that go beyond their own limited vision of what is possible.” Collaboration is distinct from other forms of cooperation in that collaboration is based on a “collectively articulated goal or vision.”

Simply put, “to collaborate” means, “to work with another person or group in order to achieve or do something.” In school we are made to collaborate on group projects. You may collaborate with your neighbors to clear the sidewalk of snow or successfully bring forward an issue to a local governing body. Working together—as coworkers, as friends, as organizations, as countries—maximizes assets while ensuring sustainability of a project. If everyone is collaborating around a commonly-valued issue, how can you abandon the effort? All participants in a collaboration have something important to offer, and, as the Bridges Out of Poverty Model from aha! Process Inc. states it, “once people form relationships of mutual respect, they are much less likely to abandon each other.”

In 2005, Paul Mattessich of The Amherst H. Wilder Research Foundation of Saint Paul presented on his text Collaboration: What Makes it Work. Based on a research review of collaboration, Mattessich presents 6 categories of “ingredients for successful collaboration”:

• Environment: a history of collaboration; community-legitimized collaboration participants; favorable political and social climate
• Membership: mutual respect, understanding and trust; broad representation across the community of those affected by an issue; understood self-interest in participation; ability to compromise
• Process and Structure: shared stake in process and outcomes; participation throughout an organization; flexibility; development of clear roles and policy guidelines; adaptability; appropriate pace of development
• Communications: open and frequent communication; established informal relationships and communication links
• Purpose: concrete, attainable goals and objectives; shared vision; unique purpose;
• Resources: sufficient funds, staff, materials, and time; skilled leadership

Collaboration works because it is a tool for bringing together different people with different relationships to an issue in order to address a community concern. There are limitations of collaborations—they are time-consuming, there is potential for power inequalities to derail the work, compromise can be challenging, they often work best in small groups, and without an ability to affect change, they are not useful—but if these limitations can be recognized and overcome, a collaboration can be a strong force for change.

What has been your experience with collaborations? Do you think they are an effective method for change? Are there other limitations or criteria for effective collaboration that you would want to add? How would you like to see collaboration in your own life and/or career?

Please explore these and other thoughts/questions here!

Growing Up Healthy was just named as one of three finalists in the InCommons Collaboration Challenge.  At stake? a $25,000 prize that will be awarded to the finalist who receives the most votes.  You know what that means… we need you to vote!!  Please follow the link and vote on-line to help us win the $25,000 prize!

InCommons Collaboration Challenge

You can also watch this great video that was made to highlight our work:

Check out the October newsletter, all about food security and food access! Yum.

october 2010

-By Sara Doyle, Carleton College (’11)

The video clip included in this month’s newsletter is a clip of Jamie Oliver, a British chef who has made it his mission to spread the word about food and its effect on our health.  Oliver’s primary focus is the epidemic of obesity and obesity-related diseases in the United States.  He asserts that changing our food habits, which have undergone a drastic change in the last century thanks to the unprecedented growth of the fast food industry and food technology, will change our health.  Eating whole foods and reclaiming the home kitchen for whole food preparation is Oliver’s prescription for halting the obesity epidemic.  Diet is indeed an “upstream” determinant of health; however, even further upstream is our crippled food system.  Food and nutrition security are crucial co-requisites to improving our health status.

Implicit in the idea of sustainable food and nutrition security are also economic and environmental security.  A summarizing framework of these interacting facets of our food system that I particularly like is ‘community food security.’ Mike Hamm and Anne Bellows define the tenets and goals community food security (CFS): community food security is a condition in which all community residents obtain a safe, culturally acceptable, nutritionally adequate diet through a sustainable food system that maximizes community self-reliance and social justice. Initiatives based on achieving CFS focus on:

• Meeting the nutritional needs and improving the health of low-income communities.
• Building up a community’s food and food access resources, like community gardens, transportation, and federal aid benefits, so that the community can meet its own nutritional needs.
• Fostering self-reliance and empowering individuals to provide for their own and their family’s nutritional needs.
• Honoring and embracing the variety of cultures and traditions within a community.

Northfield has the resources and motivation to improve the health and well being of all of its residents by supporting and expanding initiatives that work towards community food security. CFS initiatives already in place include the numerous CSA farms in Rice County, the Rural Enterprise Center community gardens, the recent introduction of EBT card readers at the Northfield and Faribault farmers’ markets, Multicultural Cooking Club with Growing Up Healthy, and increased access to fresh produce at the CAC Food Shelf.  There is still quite a bit to do to work towards creating food security for and consequently improving the health of the entire community.  We have the luxury, though, in Rice County of living proximal to very fertile and abundant land.  Becoming an advocate for a more responsible food system is in all of our best interest.

What are other ways that Rice County follows CFS principles? How can you advocate more for CFS principles in your own life and county-wide?