Changing systems of community development — CCHE's new report on lessons from SPARCC's first three years

We hope that this email finds you healthy during this global public health crisis. Here at CCHE we are grateful for the ongoing, foundational work our partners do to foster collaboration and connection in order to advance work that improves health equity.

One thing we’ve learned at CCHE over the course of 30 years, is that change happens when communities come together and partner to identify and implement solutions that fit for their community. Because of this power of coming together, we find ourselves missing the time and space to be in-person connecting, learning, and innovating with all of you. In the coming months, we look forward to learning with you how we can leverage existing relationships and continue to foster connection and collaboration in an increasingly virtual world.

We also know the negative impacts of crises are not born equally or equitably, particularly by people of color and those who are low income, which makes our work together to improve health equity, during this pandemic, more important than ever.

We see these two themes—the benefits of coming together and the call to address health equity—converging in our work to evaluate SPARCC, a complex systems change initiative, recently published in a report on SPARCC’s blog. SPARCC has always been about building relationships and connections, and that shows up in effective collaborations in its six sites. Since its formation, SPARCC has had an ambitious goal—help shift decades of racial discrimination in housing and community development, affecting equity, health, and climate resilience.

How has it fared? Read more about it in our assessment “Changing systems in community development: Lessons from the first three years of the Strong, Prosperous, and Resilient Communities Challenge (SPARCC),” where we discovered some surprising lessons. 

Please contact us for more information about SPARCC: Emily.A.Bourcier@kp.org