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Is Facilitative Leadership an Art or an Ordeal?

By Rich Bell on August 16th, 2017

If you’re a changemaker who is committed to community engagement as an essential practice for advancing health equity and addressing complex problems, you are undoubtedly drawn to facilitative leadership. After […]

Partnerships Focus on Social Determinants of Health and Help Build a New Social Contract

By Rich Bell on June 28th, 2017

Of the many wicked problems in communities, institutions, and government, virtually all of them are rooted in histories of broken connections, damaged trust and eroded respect that have driven increases […]

Culture Change Happens Up Close

By Rich Bell on March 29th, 2017

I spend a lot of my time trying to convince foundations and coalitions that authentic community engagement is the best way to work toward health equity. I mean the kind […]

Why We Need Generosity for Strong Partnerships

By Rich Bell on October 26th, 2016

As our team at Active Living By Design (ALBD) has worked with community leaders, coalitions, and partnerships over the past 14 years, we have learned countless lessons about what works […]

Deeper Lessons to Be Found in Latest Obesity Trends

By Sarah Moore, Rich Bell and Sydney Jones on June 29th, 2016

Two new reports[1] [2]  from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), show that the rate of obesity in […]

These Two Pastors Became Believers—In Young People

By Rich Bell and Sarah Moore on May 25th, 2016

The Reverends Richard Joyner and Jeffrey Brown reached turning points in their careers when they realized that the early, preventable deaths in their communities—due primarily to poor nutrition or violent […]

Imagining the Movement We Don’t Have Yet

By Rich Bell on December 9th, 2015

As efforts proliferate to adjust to healthcare reform legislation, many new ideas emerge about how to finance change, collect and share better data, change clinical practices, retool our healthcare workforce, […]

“I don’t know” is a good place to start

By Rich Bell on October 9th, 2015

The most important thing I know about systems change is that I don’t. I don’t know. The fields of public health, health care and the many other disciplines that influence […]

Look for Mature Leaders to Help Grow Others

By Rich Bell on July 22nd, 2015

The healthy communities movement has high aspirations. We want inclusive, multidisciplinary partnerships. We want real, ongoing engagement of struggling residents in low-income neighborhoods. We want shared priorities and measures of […]

Connecting Health Care and Community Prevention Could Restore Our Nation’s Health

By Rich Bell on January 14th, 2015

Izmira Palomares of Little River Medical Center describes the role of a community health worker. The public institutions we’ve long relied on are outmoded and ill equipped to solve today’s […]