Bridging the Gap Between Health Systems & Community

Community engagement is a powerful tool that can build trust, advance race equity and health justice, create cost-savings and efficiencies for health systems, and lead to healthy and thriving communities.  

However, many health systems struggle to implement meaningful community engagement practices because they lack the necessary knowledge and resources, limiting the success of these initiatives in achieving their goals. 

Successful community engagement requires that health systems go beyond just inviting the community to the table.

Inviting community members with lived experience to the table is a necessary step, but it’s often not enough to foster genuine engagement or shift power dynamics meaningfully. True participation goes beyond mere presence; it requires creating spaces where people with lived experience are not just heard but actively influence decisions and outcomes.

“Only by putting people with lived experience at the center of designing and implementing care models will the health system begin to better serve those who need it most.”

Authentic engagement is a more nuanced process that involves shared power, mutual respect, and a commitment to listening and acting on the insights and needs of those most impacted by existing inequities and injustices in health systems. Without these elements, simply being at the table can feel tokenistic and ultimately ineffective in driving real change. 

At Community Catalyst, we are committed to helping organizations and health systems go beyond inviting the community to the table to build the table with communities.

What does authentic community engagement mean to you? 

This is what people with lived experience are saying about building meaningful partnerships and sustaining community engagement work:

• “A shared power dynamic must be seen, implemented and respected at all times,” shares Connie, who has lived experience as a family caregiver for family members with complex needs. “There has to be a genuine and authentic desire to partner with people with lived experience – this will lead to deep listening and exchange of information.”
• “It is important that organizations and entities are prepared to sustain and operationalize their work – and treat it with the seriousness it deserves,” shares Stephanie, when reflecting about her years of working in community engagement, and ways she’s seen effective and impactful efforts to bring people and health systems together including language access and proximity to public transportation. “Honest and clear expectations, and being treated as an actual partner…” is mission critical to authentic community engagement, Stephanie adds.  
• “You have to be transparent with your own staff and leadership about your reasons for community engagement,” shares Burt. “Each community is unique…[and] we need to understand and appreciate the story from the community’s perspective.”

Community Catalyst, The Center to Advance Consumer Partnership, Institute for Patient- and Family-Centered Care, PFCCpartners and the Camden Coalition have partnered on a new report to identify current trends and outline best practices for health systems and organizations to build authentic community engagement strategies from the ground up.

Key Findings:

• Health care organizations express a high degree of interest in community engagement, but implementation remains variable and limited.
• How organizations and communities approach community engagement make a big difference to both the process and outcomes of the work.
• Practitioners undertaking authentic community engagement add value at an individual, organizational, and community level.
• Meaningful community engagement can improve programs’ cultural and linguistic humility, identify implicit bias, and increase representative diversity within the health care system especially for marginalized communities.
• Structural and policy factors can enable and inhibit the adoption of authentic community engagement.

Key Recommendations:

• Strengthen the practice and impact of community engagement initiatives by increasing access to training and learning communities for organizational leaders and community members leading the work.
• Prioritize leadership development and capacity building for people with lived experience — particularly those from underrepresented communities — to step into partnership roles.
• When people with lived experience are treated as experts of their own lives and empowered as community leaders at various parts of the health system, changes can be made that truly address community needs.
• Improve organizational-level infrastructure to support high-quality and impactful community engagement.
• Address structural and policy opportunities that could improve the uptake of community engagement.

Recommendations by Role:

Role	Responsibilities
Health care executive leaders	Embed community engagement as an ongoing organizational strategy to ensure the policies, programs and processes meet the needs of those being served Create leadership accountabilities to ensure community engagement is integrated across departments, service lines, quality improvement and social determents of health initiates Invest the necessary resources to position community engagement for meaningful and sustained impact including staff, training, compensation for those with lived expertise and workforce roles such as peer specialists and community health workers
Funders (philanthropists and grant-makers)	Embed clear and measurable expectations around engagement with people with lived experience into all grant making activities  Make sustainable investments that provide ongoing and flexible resources to support grantees in achieving meaningful community engagement, including fair and equitable compensation to those with lived expertise  Act as influencers to ensure the value of community engagement is integrated into reimbursement structures, performance measurement systems and other systems of health care accountability
Health care professionals leading community engagement work	Adopt practices centered on achieving authentic and sustained community engagement Relentlessly measure the impact of community engagement — both processes and outcomes Drive cross functional accountabilities for inclusion of community engagement as a core organizational practice Build from existing organizational and community relationships with people with lived experiences before creating something new
People with lived experience	Call attention to the role and contributions of people with lived experience in advancing goals shared by community and health care organizations Share perspectives and experiences around gaps in diversity and barriers to engagement along with ideas to help organizations design community engagement approaches that overcome these challenges   Help organizations identify existing community groups and community-led initiatives to connect with and support Using the INSPIRE frameworks and language, insist on transparent communication from organizations around community engagement goals, strategies, compensation policies, and sharing of outcomes

Get Involved

How can health care organizations build meaningful partnerships with community members and people with lived experiences? Share your story.