group of people talking around table

Our Strategies

As we work towards our goal of achieving a resilient and sustainable safety net system, our community has identified a set of six strategies for achieving our vision. These strategies are ever evolving and adjusting- as we learn how to improve, as we enter into new phases, as we respond to new events in our community.

From 2017 through 2018, we hosted a variety of events- from large, crowd-sourcing gatherings to design a vision statement for our initiative; to smaller, policy-oriented Design Teams to dig deep on specific approaches to difficult problems. The Design Teams helped us to craft the following strategies to solve these problems:

  • The Community of Practice. Partners need a time and place to share ideas and contribute to the Initiative as it grows. The Community of Practice brings together nonprofits, government, philanthropy, residents, and others to promote the vision and culture of the Initiative.
  • System Leadership Capacity Building Program. Training leaders and board members to increase their capacity for leading systems change.
  • Innovation Lab grant program. Safety net practitioners encouraged HealthSpark to support systems change through a new way of grantmaking that would allow community partners to test new ideas, build relationships, and pilot systems change opportunities. 
  • Advocacy Coalition. Public advocacy efforts for single safety net sectors or policies have long been uncoordinated. An Advocacy Coalition is building to create a network of aligned and mobilized partners to advocate on behalf of the safety net as a whole.
  • Communications Campaign. The safety net sector needs a fresh set of messaging strategies, so HealthSpark is engaging a PR firm to craft a new narrative that promotes the value of the safety net system and destigmatizes use of the system.
  • Commissioned Research. Research projects allow us to take a deeper dive into local data and perspectives and scan the nation for promising practices to craft better policies and programs for our safety net.