Healthy Community Coalition Meeting

November 20, 2014

Topic: Framing Our Shared Purpose

Attendees:

Barbara Luniuck-Rakita: Friends of Youth / Kristina Steffin: Sound Mental Health / Kelly Stinson: Snoqualmie Valley School District
Fritz Ribary: Snoqualmie Valley Hospital / Carol Trenga: Health Scientist/Wellness Consultant / Nela Cumming: Encompass
Amy Biggs: Sno-Valley Transit / Laura Smith: Snoqualmie Valley Community Network
Agenda Topic / Info Shared / Action/Next Steps
Welcome, introductions, announcements / The HCC will be meeting on the 3rd Thursday of each month.
We reviewed the purposes of the Healthy Community Coalition.
Primary purposes:
  • A shared learning community around health and wellness
  • A platform for "think tanking" on ad hoc concerns attendees bring to the table
Secondary purposes:
  • A networking opportunity for attendees
  • Communication/connecting residents of the valley
  • Information Sharing/Clearinghouse for the Valley
  • Encouraging promotion and use of agencies (need more definition)
  • Evaluation of initiatives
  • Coordination between the sectors
Attendees made a variety of timely announcements related to upcoming events. / N/A
Review of September and October meetings: Determining a Shared Focus / We discussed the process to date, and created some group norms that will help us be most effective as we move forward.
Our Group Intentions:
  • Start and end on time
  • Work toward specific goals while fostering innovation and creativity
  • Assume positive intent
  • Maintain an environment of compassion and forgiveness
  • Be respectful by avoiding side conversations and using deep listening
  • Seek to understand
  • Strive to stay on task
  • Continually work to build trust and integrity
  • Make room for purposeful pauses and reflection (add to the beginning of the meeting)
Other points to help us be our most effective:
Move the newsletter date to the beginning of the month so that attendees have access to the minutes sooner / N/A
Framing Our Shared Purpose: A More Collaborative and United Snoqualmie Valley Community / To help frame our shared purpose, we explored our unanswered questions:
  • How do we define the Snoqualmie Valley? We decided that for our purposes this includes: Duvall, Carnation, Fall City, Preston (98050), Snoqualmie, North Bend, and Snoqualmie Pass.
  • What are we trying to UNITE? We decide that we are not trying to unite anything. Instead we are connecting the valley community by reducing barriers to health and wellness.
  • Are the resources really available? Accessible?
After a discussion, we agreed on the following as a working goal:
Our shared purpose or goal is to reducing barriers to create a more collaborative, connected Snoqualmie Valley by:
  • increasing communication about services
  • teaching/guiding public how to navigate the system
  • connecting agencies in meaningful ways.
Next, we moved into exploring the barriers as we see them.
  • Distance: Mental health services are challenging to find because those that are in your network may also be far away
  • Valley geography: 500 square miles
  • KC often offers urban solutions for rural challenges
  • Political boundaries
  • Availability
  • Access: What I am able to use vs. what is available
  • Transportation: The reality is that we tend to own and drive our own cars, yet we think it is great for others to use public transit; not enough political clout
  • Our communities look affluent and that gets in the way of funding (example: we have a 19-21% Free and reduced lunch rate as compared with White Center’s 80% rate)
  • There is a “rural” attitude or resistance to getting help
  • Gaps in affordable housing
/ Carol is playing around with mapping some of the boundaries that exist.
Next steps / At the December meeting, we will review and finish our discussion about barriers and begin a conversation about opportunities or ways that the HCC might actively work on the goal. / N/A
Solutions Parking Lot / We want to be purposeful about giving adequate time to narrowing the focus, identifying root cause, identifying opportunities, BEFORE jumping into a problem solving mode. To help with this, we have created a Solutions Parking Lot to track solutions that come up and we will revisit them when the time comes. These items came up in Oct and Nov.
  • Map how we currently get information (like a map at a mall)
  • Grid of providers and the related barriers to getting service
  • Heart of the Valley kiosks throughout the valley with “community navigators” who can help connect people with valley systems and services
  • Crosslink our resources by posting/linking to another’s websites
  • Welcome Wagon as a vehicle for getting quality information out to community
  • Design a rural, culturally competent model
  • Engage Kathy Lambert in this effort
/ N/A