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Mutual accountability is the key to equity-oriented systems change: how initiatives can create durable shifts in policies and practices
Mutual accountability is the key to equity-oriented systems change: how initiatives can create durable shifts in policies and practices
- Collection:
- Health Policy and Services Research
- Author(s):
- Lo, Lydia, author
Aron, Laudan Y., author
Pettit, Kathryn L.S., author
Payton Scally, Corianne, author - Contributor(s):
- Urban Institute, issuing body.
- Publication:
- Washington, DC : Urban Institute, October 2021
- Language(s):
- English
- Format:
- Text
- Subject(s):
- Charities -- economics
Health Promotion -- ethics
Racism -- prevention & control
United States - Genre(s):
- Technical Report
- Abstract:
- The COVID-19 pandemic and protests arising from police killings of Black Americans have drawn national attention to long-existent and worsening racialized gaps in health, wealth, and well-being that decades of investment and problem solving have been unable to close. Responding to amplified calls from communities and advocates for meaningful change, some philanthropic organizations are reexamining what and how they fund. We present findings from one such effort by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) in partnership with the Urban Institute to assess the funder’s health-promoting portfolio of investments in community development organizations and activities. This brief presents a framework for grantmakers seeking to understand why some past efforts have fallen short and how future investments might produce more equity-oriented, power-shifting systems change.1 Urban analyzed a portion of RWJF’s portfolio consisting of 15 health-promoting programs and investments launched between 2013 and 2019 that aimed to integrate public health, health care, and community development to improve community health, well-being, and equity. As part of the assessment, we developed a guiding framework that proved critical to our inquiry. We were able to road-test the model as we synthesized insights from dozens of interviews with grantees and partners, community development intermediaries, and philanthropic leaders and staff. The mutual accountability framework allowed us to disentangle intended goals, necessary commitments, and actual results to think about the ways these three elements may—or may not be—aligned. Building on work from the field of public health, the mutual accountability framework highlights that system change initiatives need to (1) make explicit the multiple types of commitments needed from empowered entities, (2) align commitments to fit goals and capacity, and (3) create sustainable, results-based accountability mechanisms. Equity-oriented systems change necessitates shifts in power and resources from more systematically advantaged groups and places to systematically disadvantaged ones. Thus, mechanisms will be needed to ensure mutual accountability between a foundation, its grantees, community members, and especially other powerful stakeholders not necessarily attached to the grant. The framework can help foundations review and learn from current investments, as well as inform strategies for future grantmaking and other activities, by identifying what commitments are needed by whom and how commitments can be realized and, most importantly, sustained (and adapted) over time and place.
- Copyright:
- Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further use of the material is subject to CC BY-NC-DC license. (More information)
- Extent:
- 1 online resource (1 PDF file (8 pages))
- Illustrations:
- Illustrations
- NLM Unique ID:
- 9918299888706676 (See catalog record)
- Permanent Link:
- http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/9918299888706676