“Healthy communities networker, integrator, and distance runner on the go.”
“Healthy communities networker, integrator, and distance runner on the go.”
Sarah Strunk is Strategic Advisor at Healthy Places by Design. She has been with the organization since its inception as Active Living by Design, first serving as Deputy Director from 2002-2005 and as Director/Executive Director from 2005-2015. As Strategic Advisor, Sarah focuses on business development, partnership development, and providing institutional history and strategic guidance to the organization’s leadership team. She also collaborates with a range of grantmakers and nonprofit organizations to lead, support, and facilitate strategic planning, collaborative learning, program development, and business development initiatives.
She has professional experience in leadership, strategic planning, business development, operational planning, fundraising, and constituent relations in provider, payer, public health, university, and nonprofit organizations. Previously, she was Director of External Affairs at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. Sarah also served as Director of Corporate Planning at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, and in strategic planning and business planning roles at Duke University Medical Center and Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center.
Sarah earned a Masters of Healthcare Administration from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1991, and a Bachelor of Arts in Public Policy from Duke University in 1987. In her free time, she enjoys training for and running marathons, Duke basketball, and spending time with her dog.
I grew up wearing a knapsack that I didn’t know was there: a knapsack of white privilege.* Because of my knapsack, I biked freely throughout my community, where there were safe streets and neighbors who looked out for me, without fear of violence or racial profiling. Because of my knapsack, I walked both alone and with friends to school, where I was greeted by teachers who had all the resources they needed to help me learn, without threat of suspension for breaking a rule. Because of my knapsack, I freely participated in after-school activities, where there were reliable, caring adults who supported my interest in sports, music, and leadership and didn’t set boundaries for me based on stereotypes about my race. And because of my knapsack, I went home to a comfortable house my parents owned, knowing I would wake up there the next day, the next month, and the next year, thanks to my dad’s employment opportunities and the generational wealth had accumulated in my family. In my small, Midwestern suburb, my friends weren’t much different from me.
That changed abruptly when I made some new friends as a young teen while spending long periods of time in a children’s hospital in the middle of Chicago’s South Side. Located near some of the city’s largest public housing communities, most of the other patients were kids from neighborhoods and families that were very different from mine. Rosita, Pamela, and Terry were there with chronic asthma, exacerbated by family stress, mold- or roach-infested apartments, and bad air quality. Larry and Kevin had Type 1 diabetes, worsened by food insecurity and lack of reliable access to insulin. And Laura, Shaneka, and their siblings were dealing with the after effects of sex trafficking and their mother’s murder. Though I didn’t have the words for it then, this is the first time I came face-to-face with my privilege – and realized, quite starkly – the extent to which health is tied to so much more than visits to the doctor.
After working in the health care sector during my early career, it’s not surprising that I found my way to community health in 2002. Building a new organization from scratch, then Active Living by Design, was both an honor and an opportunity to focus on entire neighborhoods, communities, and the systems that shape them. And, through our 16+ year evolution to Healthy Places by Design and a more expansive focus on the social determinants of health, we’re able to partner even more intentionally to create a nation of healthy, equitable communities where everyone reaches their full potential – knapsack or not.
*With thanks to Sheila McIntosh, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.”