Equity-Centered Community Engagement: Transforming Public Agencies for Inclusive Outcomes

Genuine, local-level engagement between public agencies and the communities they serve is crucial to meeting the needs and priorities of people experiencing health inequities, particularly communities of color and low-income people. Public agencies often ask their communities for input, which results in low participation and feedback, perpetuating the inequitable status quo. How can public agencies re-think their community engagement practices, prioritizing people historically excluded from access to power and decision-making? And what is the role of philanthropy in this work? 

Building off of a recently released research brief on the same topic, Blue Shield of California Foundation and Onside Partners, in partnership with Philanthropy CA, invite you to attend a webinar that will explore what authentic community engagement by public agencies might look like and showcase inspiring examples from various California public health and education agencies that have successfully transformed their engagement strategies. These examples illustrate that meaningful change doesn’t necessarily demand vast resources but requires strong leadership and capacity building. Although the perception of the government is one of having more financial resources than many philanthropic institutions, we will discuss and provide examples of how philanthropic dollars can effectively support sustainable government transformation.