Healthy Communities, Healthy Patients: CHCs are the Catalyst

Julia Liou, MPH, is CEO of Asian Health Services; Thu Quach, PhD, is President of Asian Health Services; Robert Phillips, MPH, MPA, ABD, is CEO of Baywell Health; and Kimberly S.G. Chang, MD, MPH, is a Physician at Asian Health Services and a Commonwealth Fund Fellow in Health Policy 2015.

What does a healthy community look like? What does healing look like? How do we help to create the conditions for a united Oakland community that cares for each other? How do we make everyone feel welcome at our health centers and in our local community? These are questions Asian Health Services (AHS) and Baywell Health, two Community Health Centers (CHCs) in Oakland, California, sought to answer.

CHCs are at the heart of the communities they serve. With the goal to develop strong networks to embrace all members of the Oakland community, Asian Health Services and Baywell Health embarked on an ambitious partnership to bring peace, understanding, and deepen connections with the myriad of patients for whom we provide health care, and community organizations with whom we partner.

Knowing that our communities are stronger and healthier when we are in good relationships with each other on individual and societal levels, and to unite for solutions to community violence affecting all of the Oakland area, Asian Health Services and Baywell Health intentionally co-created community events to bring people together and to promote healing and safety. For example, annual celebratory events every February in honor of Black History Month and Lunar New Year in a neighborhood center brought artistic and cultural performances of Lion Dances and African drumming together, alongside health education booths, art exhibitions, and health care and social services information booths.

Other events to bring understanding of the rich history between the two health centers included:

• bringing elderly participants on experiential learning field trips
• exchanges with other organizations
• healing circle activities, visiting West Oakland and learning about the history of segregation and displacement, and how the West Oakland Health Council (now Baywell Health) was formed, and how West Oakland Health Council helped support Asian Health Services to become a federally qualified health center

A particularly impactful experience was a visit to San Quentin prison's ROOTS program in collaboration with the Asian Prisoner Support Committee. The incarcerated students shared their childhood exposures to violence and their ideas for effective community safety. One speaker was a young Chinese man, former AHS patient, and Chinatown resident.

The seniors were so moved by the incarcerated students that they wrote letters with encouraging words:

"Although our time together was short, I am deeply thankful for your openness and warmth. Your stories have truly touched our hearts. Each one of you shared something moving and powerful. Though the journey home may be full of challenges and uncertainties, remember that every step brings you closer to home and every day brings you closer to hope."

Inspired by the series, the seniors began to advocate for community-based violence prevention and expanded services for people with limited English proficiency, and to organize community events to promote healing and safety.

Internally, AHS embarked on a campaign to increase the clinic's welcoming environment for people from various backgrounds - by leading staff discussions and activities on empathy, understanding, compassion, reclaiming joy, and developing visual materials and signage to welcome all patients. Other healing events included screening the short film "Love Has Two Meanings" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUfG2y45ZKU), which documented the field trip by the seniors above to San Quentin prison, and facilitating brown bag discussions for staff about what healing means and how we can be agents for healing to everyone in our community.

Through external community healing and safety activities and internal organizational efforts, AHS and Baywell Health are harnessing the power of health centers to create healthier communities and healthier patients!

This project was supported in part by the Commonwealth Fund, a national, private foundation based in New York City that supports independent research on health care issues and makes grants to improve health care practice and policy. The views presented here are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Commonwealth Fund, its directors, officers, or staff.