TRANSFORMATIONAL CAPACITY BUILDING
Our capacity building work is an incubator for community-led health care innovation. We invest in the leadership of our communities to build power and sustainable change.
Our communities deserve to thrive. Our capacity building work aims to engender necessary shifts in our health care system and processes to advance health equity within our communities. We focus on HIV+ care and LGBTQ care.
OUR APPROACH
Capacity building is the process of building and strengthening the systems, structures, cultures, skills, resources, and power that organizations need to serve their communities.[1] Mirroring conventional methods of health care, mainstream capacity building often fails organizations working with historically marginalized communities, particularly BIPOC and LGBTQ communities. Our approach to capacity building aims for transformation by questioning status-quo, tackling historical oppression, co-creation and leadership development, and building something new.
[1] Nishimuri A, Sampath R, Le V, Sheikh A, Valenzuela A. “Transformational Capacity Building.” Stanford Social Innovation Review, Fall 2020. https://svpdenver.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/SSIR-Transformational-Capacity-Building.pdf
Leaders in HIV+ and LGBTQ health care: Founded in 1987, SFCHC grew out of the response to the 1980s AIDS crisis, specifically supporting the impact of the epidemic on the Asian and Pacific Islander community. In 2015, we became recognized as a Federally Qualified Health Center, increasing our clinical capacity. Over the years, we have welcomed anyone in need of our services. We celebrate and attend to the health and wellness of the communities that define San Francisco—immigrant and communities of color, queer, trans, unhoused people, and all of us who are most impacted by oppression. We are our community, and we are in service of us every single day.
For, by, and of us: Many of our communities have a warranted distrust of our medical system—broad inequities and lack of access, history of atrocities committed against communities of color within medicine, structural violence, and institutionalized discrimination. SheBoutique is an example of a time that trans people were able to take power over the health care process. Those of us at the margins are the only experts of our own experiences, and we must be the ones to lead this change. Our capacity building work is for, by, and of us. We are incubators of community-led and -centered health care innovation, and we invest in the leadership of the queerest among us to build power and sustainable change.
Shifting power and resources for sustainability: SFCHC has provided capacity-building assistance and training since 1993, because we did not see initiatives that reflected the needs of our communities. We do not want to perpetuate or re-create the same systems that do not work for us and prolong inappropriate treatments and services.[2] For our work to be sustainable, we advocate for a shift in power and resources, and we foster community power building. Capacity building for health equity must include investing in community leadership, cohort-building, and working together (rather than in competition) for collective impact.
[2] When medical treatment or social services are not actionable, not available, and not sustainable for our communities
Rooted in health justice: Health justice[3] is both a community-led movement for power building and transformational change. Health justice is distinguished by a distinctively social ethic of care that reframes the relationship between health care, public health, and the social determinants of health. Health justice explicitly tackles root causes that shape health inequities, including institutional racism, homophobia, and transphobia.
[3] Wiley LF, Yearby R, Clark BR, Mohapatra S. INTRODUCTION: What is Health Justice? J Law Med Ethics. 2022;50(4):636-640. doi: 10.1017/jme.2023.2. PMID: 36883386; PMCID: PMC10009391.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10009391/
OUR PROGRAMS
While we call for a shift in power and resources away from top-down public health programs to community-produced initiatives, we continue to work while existing within mainstream funding models. Our programs push the boundaries of our funding as we work concurrently to transform these systems and define sustainability for our communities.
Inquiries for Capacity Building
If your organization has an interest in Capacity Building Assistance, please contact Pamela Tassin in our Chicago office at:
Pamela Tassin
pamela@sfcommunityhealth.org
(773) 661-8439