2021 Annual Report

The Achieving Birth Equity through Systems Transformation (ABEST) project sought to disrupt racial inequities in maternal and infant mortality. ABEST focuses on root causes, including the role of racism, and addressing relationships and power within systems. This project aimed to change how we talk about and act on maternal and infant health. Through a partnership with two communities and systems leaders from across Michigan, the ABEST project built capacity among state and local leaders to lead systems to change, and shift mental models and narratives through a series of birth equity workshops. The two community partners – Berrien County Raising Up Healthy Babies Task Force and Inter-Tribal Council of Michigan Asabike Coalition – worked with the ABEST team to develop Roadmaps for Birth Equity. These Roadmaps included specific, actionable strategies for transformative systems change to achieve birth equity. The Roadmap for Birth Equity in Berrien County is guided by a vision of building authentic connections that break down division and make community power to achieve progress toward birth equity. Inspired by the core principles of Birth Detroit, the roadmap focuses on affirming that BIPOC are "leaders in our own care." The Roadmap for Birth Equity developed by the Asabike Coalition is guided by a vision of systems change that supports whole-person birth experiences that hold tradition and culture at the center. The roadmap focuses on creating equitable options within existing systems by incorporating Indigenous cultural practices and belief systems to establish an elevated standard of care.

Key Impact

The Inter-Tribal Council of Michigan Asabike Coalition and the Berrien County Health Department Raising Up Healthy Babies Taskforce have specific, actionable strategies for advancing birth equity in their communities. Both coalitions have used their Roadmaps for Birth Equity to engage key partners in the work and secure additional funding to implement the strategies.

This project is funded by the Michigan Health Endowment Fund (MHEF). It includes partnerships with the Michigan Health and Hospital Association (MHA) and the MSU Institute for Health Policy (IHP). The primary goal is to support two hospitals in their efforts to more effectively collect and utilize Race, Ethnicity, and Language (REAL) data, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI), and Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) data for improved quality and patient care.

Key Impact

CSE solidified partnerships with key organizations (MHA, MSU IHP) and established new working relationships with two hospital partners (Spectrum Lakeland and Bronson Methodist). We collaborated with LGBTQIA+ subject matter experts/advocates to bring important information to hospital staff from folks with lived experience trying to get quality healthcare. This project also allowed us to engage in a cross-center partnership. We are now working with CHEP to develop SOGI-specific training for acute care providers that can be leveraged for future engagements. We also hosted the Michigan Health Equity Summit on November 3 and are planning for a second summit in 2022.

In 2021 the Center for Strategic Health Partnerships introduced the MPHI Precision Public Health (PPH) Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes (ECHO) model. The cornerstone of ECHO programming is to build authentic relationships, democratize knowledge and embrace "all teach, all learn." Project ECHO is a guided-practice model that reduces health disparities in underserved and remote areas of the state, nation, and world. The ECHO model uses a hub-and-spoke knowledge-sharing approach through innovative telementoring. Expert teams lead virtual groups, amplifying the capacity to deliver improved access, knowledge, and best practices in their communities. CSHP is funded through a Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) grant to implement the ECHO Hub. A partnership agreement has been finalized with the ECHO Project at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center, allowing CSHP-trained staff to replicate the ECHO model in its Center and projects. CSHP has fully trained ECHO facilitation, administration, evaluation, and IT staff to support the Institute's ECHO projects and ensure model fidelity.

Key Impact

The ECHO Hub at MPHI is built to meet the needs of our Center and projects. This model allows us to deliver telementoring, training, support, and growth opportunities within our projects and the communities we serve.

Black families disproportionately experience infant deaths due to unsafe sleep circumstances and environments. The role of Black fathers in preventing such tragedies is often overlooked and warrants considerable focus when seeking solutions to this problem. The implementation of the Brother-to-Brother initiative, funded by the Michigan Health Endowment Fund, began in June 2021 by identifying fathers to be trained as peer mentors to facilitate conversations on infant safe sleep at various community venues where men gather in Detroit. However, the team soon discovered the need to address other issues critical to fathers before engaging them in discussing the importance of regularly practicing the infant safe sleep guidelines. For this reason, the team felt it necessary to expand the scope of the Brother-to-Brother initiative to include more topics for peer-to-peer engagement, specifically for Black fathers. Ten fatherhood educational forums were held to include the following topics:

• How to support women during pregnancy
• Co-parenting conflicts/re-branded "Bitter baby Mommas"
• Understanding women and their pregnancy pt. 1
• Infant/toddler first aid and CPR
• Work-Life Balance
• The importance of black mothers breastfeeding week
• Breaking every chain: My brother's keeper
• Men and learning infant milestones

Key Impact

This work aims to create educational materials that resonate with Black fathers and motivate them to work in partnership with the mothers of their children to adopt the infant safe sleep guidelines consistently.

The Community Engagement and Collective Impact (CE-CI) project explores the practices and ideas that make community engagement work "authentic." During the project's first phase, CDMTR staff conducted an environmental scan of health equity-focused community engagement efforts in the United States. During phase 2, we will conduct interviews and focus groups with people participating in community engagement projects that are positively impacting health and well-being to learn from their work. During the project's final phase, we will put all of the lessons we have learned in a final report. We hope that the final report will be helpful to people working in organizations and agencies committed to improving their community engagement practices and working toward health equity.

Key Impact

The findings from the phase 1 environmental scan – summarized in this report – can be applied to community engagement in Michigan across different areas and populations, including urban, rural, youth, Black, Indigenous, persons of color, and more. The report supports any person, group, or organization who wants to learn how to engage community members and key players in making communities healthy – from grassroots organizations to funders.

CCRE launched a new partnership with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF) as the grant administrator for HEAL, WKKF's racial healing initiative focused on racial healing grantmaking and capacity building. The CCRE is also the learning and evaluation partner for the HEAL Initiative. Using a culturally responsive engagement approach, the focus of our 2021 work has included co-design of the HEAL grantmaking strategy and supporting WKKF in identifying potential grantees. In addition, CCRE assisted the launch of the nation's first Racial Healing Certificate program at the Center on Community Philanthropy at the University of Arkansas, Clinton School for Public Service. We provided thought partnership on the certificate program design and planning in collaboration with our national partners. We also used a culturally responsive, participatory approach with our partners to develop a theory of change, logic model, evaluation work plan, and evaluation measures. CCRE also started the development of a racial healing tool for the field that offers a racial healing perspective on evaluation – specifically how the evaluation process can explicitly advance racial healing in communities that have historically been harmed by research and evaluation.

Key Impact

By the end of 2021, members of the inaugural cohort of the Racial Healing Certification Program had participated in the first post-session evaluation survey. The partners used the survey findings to identify areas of progress/success and areas that required focus for continuous improvement efforts. CCRE also developed recommendations to guide the selection of grantees to be funded via the WKKF Racial Healing Initiative.