Community Possibilities
Community Possibilities
How to Create Authentic Community Engagement
What if the secret to lasting health change isn't in your next program, but in how you invite communities to lead the work itself? Drawing from my experiences with over 50 coalitions, this episode unpacks why so many well-intentioned organizations struggle with community engagement and offers a practical roadmap for building authentic partnerships.
We explore the uncomfortable truth about traditional coalition meetings—how they often become information-sharing sessions that waste everyone's time rather than spaces for genuine collaboration. You'll discover why the curse of professional knowledge can blind us to community wisdom, and learn specific strategies for creating welcoming foundations that go far beyond sending meeting invitations. From addressing practical barriers like childcare and transportation to examining our own positionality and power dynamics, this conversation provides concrete tools for moving from consultation to true empowerment.
The episode introduces a comprehensive framework for community engagement that transforms how you approach everything from initial relationship-building to co-creating shared visions. Through participatory exercises like community asset mapping and root cause analysis, you'll learn how to help communities design solutions that reflect their lived experiences rather than predetermined professional assumptions. We also dive deep into equity principles, exploring how to recognize and address the reality that not everyone starts from the same place on life's spiral staircase.
Whether you're leading a health coalition, managing community programs, or working in prevention, this episode offers both inspiration and practical guidance for building the kind of authentic community partnerships that create lasting change. Subscribe for more insights on collaborative approaches to community consulting and health equity work.
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Connect with Ann: Community Evaluation Solutions
How Ann can help:
· Support the evaluation capacity of your coalition or community-based organization.
· Help you create a strategic plan that doesn’t stress you and your group out, doesn’t take all year to design, and is actionable.
· Engage your group in equitable discussions about difficult conversations.
· Facilitate a workshop to plan for action and get your group moving.
· Create a workshop that energizes and excites your group for action.
· Speak at your conference or event.
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Music by Zach Price: Zachpricet@gmail.com
Hi everybody, welcome to Community Possibilities. This is my very first solo episode. I'm going to wing it here. Let's give it a shot. You know, last year I was able to speak at the DMPAO National Training in 2024, the Division of Nutrition and Physical Activity from the CDC, and they had asked me to speak on strengthening health through community engagement and I thought I would, in this solo episode, just share some of that talk that I gave. So many of my coalition clients, my nonprofits, who work in communities, really struggle with community engagement. So I am going to just dive right in and tell you a little bit about what I shared at that meeting. So I started off by talking about that meeting. So I started off by talking about, well, sharing a story.
Ann Price:My brother-in-law and his kids had come to visit for the weekend. As a matter of fact, they were here this past weekend for the same reason. They come every year about this time and there's a band competition downtown that they always enjoy going to. Anyway, you know I love to feed people, so I made a big breakfast. You know, eggs, bacon, fruit, homemade biscuits, all of the things. And God love her. My little niece made her plate. And God love her. My little niece made her plate, loaded herself up with four biscuits and nothing else, not a fruit, no eggs, nothing. Probably wasn't my most loving aunt moment, but I definitely said something along the lines of oh, oh, my goodness, girl, put some protein on your plate, let's get some color on that plate. Anyway, not, definitely not. My finest moment probably didn't encourage her to eat healthy in any way, but have you ever had a similar moment when you, somebody you care about, makes an unhealthy choice? You know we want all our friends, all our families, all our community members to be healthier. So you know, here's the deal. An engaged community is the most effective way to achieve health equity. Wouldn't you agree with that?
Ann Price:Coalition leaders and community public health leaders, just like yourself, are tired of chasing everyone to get the work done. The problem is they aren't engaging their communities at all. Maybe they just don't know where to start. A lot of times, from what I see, they really just engage the professionals and they think they must be doing something right, because people are coming to their meetings, but they aren't always the same people at their meetings, so it's hard to get traction. You're always reinventing yourself. You're always starting over with your information. You're always providing the same. Hey, this is what we do, this is what we're trying to achieve. You know, come join us right, and you have another meeting, new group of people. Hey, this is what we're trying to do, this is what we're trying to achieve. We want you to be part.
Ann Price:Over and over and over again, we kid ourselves into thinking that bodies at meetings equals collaboration, and so we fail to address the gaps that keep people unhealthy. So what we're missing is that messy middle in our logic model. Right, the education, the resources, the supportive systems everything we need to achieve our long-term outcomes. So again, what do you want for the communities you serve? You want improved health outcomes. You want improved social outcomes for your community, and to achieve that, you have to engage your community members, from the design of the intervention, through data collection and evaluation, through oh yes, evaluation, use and learning. That's what it's all about.
Ann Price:And then back again, we repeat that whole cycle. Right, it's not a one-time deal. We're always trying to learn, always trying to improve. So the first thing you need to do is make that invitation. You have to understand what you can do to draw them in and make them feel valued, make them feel welcome and there's lots of ways we can do that and we're going to talk about that. And then, when they feel welcome, when they come in your door better yet, when you go in their door, you engage them in designing that vision, that strategy for your community and once they're there, you let them drive the train. It's their community right, it's their outcomes. That's what we really want to focus on. We're just here as part of the roundtable I like to talk about right. We're just there to be a guide, share our knowledge, where we can learn all the time, but really we're just part of their team member, a resource, if you will.
Ann Price:So today I want to speak with you about the strategies to engage your communities through the whole process of prevention work, from meeting, involving designing, implementing, evaluating and communicating your results so that you and your communities have the big impact that we all desire. So how important do you think it is for you to engage your coalition or group, to engage your community in your work so that it sticks? It's really important and maybe you know it's important, but you still feel like it's a struggle and there's many places where we miss opportunities. Where we miss opportunities when things are hard, it helps to remember your why, and so I invite you to maybe journal, if that's your thing, or maybe, when you're on a walk, to really think about your why, take a second and jot down your why. So for those of you who don't know, when I was younger, in my career I really wanted to be a clinical psychologist.
Ann Price:I worked in treatment centers, mainly with kids who really bore the weight of their family's trauma. Oftentimes they were the identified patient, and it was very difficult. I worked with a lot of kids who were addicted to substances, and they were magically cured when their insurance ran out, or they relapsed as soon as they were discharged. The last straw for me was when I had to commit one of my patients to a state hospital. She was 14 years old and we had kept her as long as we could, way after her insurance had run out, and she was just too ill to be sent home. And I'll tell more of that story maybe another day. But you know, I thought to myself, surely there has to be another way, surely we can focus on prevention so that these kids are not in this situation, these families are not struggling like they are. And so I found my way to community psychology, which is all about prevention, and the socio-ecological model and and yes systems level change. So what I found? That even after all these years, the work is still hard.
Ann Price:Community engagement and collaboration is such an important part of prevention, and it is difficult, and I've seen a lot of community coalitions and grantees of all types make a lot of mistakes, and I've made a few of them myself along the way. So let's first of all talk about where we get it wrong and, believe me, it's not your fault. We're all just trying to do the best we can with the tools that we have. We know what the community needs, right? That's probably the first mistake that many of us make. We know what the community needs, so we design interventions without them, right? It's the curse of knowledge. We know what we know. We've been taught all the things, all the frameworks we've learned in school readiness for change, the health beliefs model, evidence-based practices. We've got all the great tools. Just let us apply those tools and we'll get you all fixed up.
Ann Price:So another mistake that we commonly make is we use the community members as bobblehead dolls in our work and in our findings. We just want them to sign off on the intervention that we've already designed or we already wrote in the grant, because you know it was written and accepted and we want it, so therefore it must be a great thing. And then next, we don't always communicate with our community members, our results, in ways that connect with them or worse, we don't even communicate with them at all. We just extract information from them and we never get back. They're not part of that whole process. And I'm just speaking to my fellow evaluators we're the worst offenders. We use language that no one understands, like input and output, and then when we do write a report, we don't always give it to our clients or give it to the communities in ways they can digest and use.
Ann Price:And sometimes we don't even define what we mean by community. Is a community a town? Is it a city? Is it a state? Is it people with a specific issue? I see this all the time with my community coalitions when they use the word member. What is a member? Is a member? A person? Is a member? A organization? What is a coalition member? Who is in our community? And then I have to tell you that sometimes we do the we work, but we don't do the me work, and by that I mean we don't think about our own positionality, we don't question how we share power, and I don't know about you all, but this is something I'm always working on.
Ann Price:Again, I told you I make many mistakes and I have no problem sharing those with you. So a couple of years ago I was doing a training with a colleague with a group that works in the disability space and we needed to do an icebreaker. The group was really lagging and I said something like all right, everybody stand up. Yeah, the problem with that is not everybody in the room could stand up right, because I'm operating for my able-bodied self and my brain and that's my default Duh right. Somebody was kind enough to call me out, call me in on that mistake, and I have never forgotten that Sometimes we learn the most from our mistakes. Anyway, the overall result of these mistakes and you can probably think of a lot more is that we design interventions and programs without the community's input, so we make mistakes like serving culturally inappropriate food at different community meetings.
Ann Price:We provide fruits and vegetables and assume they get eaten right. So we might have a church or an organization that provides food boxes, so we put fruits and veggies in there, assuming they're going to get eaten, assuming people will be grateful, and that is not always the case. Sometimes folks don't know what to do with it, it's unfamiliar, sometimes they just don't like it. I remember a couple of years ago I gave my neighbor a bunch of okra, only to find out, like I don't eat okra. Right, a lot of people don't like okra. They don't know how to cook it and it gets all gummy. And you know what I mean, right? Sometimes we assume the focal community has the knowledge, capacity and, yes, the kitchen equipment to make the food.
Ann Price:We make all sorts of assumptions. Sometimes we assume that if we just educate them on why physical activity, for example, is important, they're going to get walking. Sometimes we assume if we tell them why their kids should be vaccinated, they will. Sometimes we assume that systems are supportive of the change that we want to see. I think that is just so common.
Ann Price:The bottom line is we make all sorts of assumptions when we're designing our groups and it's perfectly normal that you and your group may not be engaging the community. That is not something that is rare by any chance. We weren't really taught to do it and if you were, it was more probably on a research kind of angle. But we know we can do better right, we definitely can do better. But we know we can do better right, we definitely can do better. So how can we authentically engage community members?
Ann Price:Well, there are many models of collaboration. There's Frye, there's Arnstein's ladder of participation. Those are just two examples. The models all depict a continuum of collaboration that includes, like non-participation to full community engagement and empowerment and I know the word empowerment gets a bad rap these days, but I'm going to try to come into communities with that stance that you are all the experts in your communities. Yes, I have some expertise, I have some things that I can offer, but I am here to support you.
Ann Price:So, in thinking about your group, where is your group along this continuum from non-participation to empowerment, everything that goes in between, like inform them we just provide information or consultation, hey, we're doing this thing, what do you think about it? We've already decided to do this thing, but now, what do you think about it? To collaboration, where we work together, to empowerment, where, again, our community is driving the train is driving the train. So how do you invite people to the table you know that proverbial table and feed them once they're there. So I want to share with you my framework for community engagement, and it's based on my experience with working with more than 50 coalitions. Experience with working with more than 50 coalitions it's new for me, so I'd love your feedback. I won't have time to go into the whole framework today, but I do want to share some of the guiding principles and two of the key areas.
Ann Price:So let's talk about the principles, because those are your guideposts, the things that keep you from going off the road into a ditch. Keep you from going off the road into a ditch and I know there's been a lot of talk in the last six months about DEI and DEI going away. Maybe, if you're listening to this podcast, you're still on that walk. You're still learning. You still think it's important. Good for you, I do too. You're still learning. You still think it's important. Good for you, I do too. I want you to really think about how your group is living out these principles. So let's start with community voice. So community voice embodies all of the principles. So what are the ways you are inviting, making space, listening to community voice, and just take a moment to think about that.
Ann Price:Let's talk about the principle of inclusion. Inclusion really means that people across varying identities are and feel valued. They feel welcomed, respected, included, represented and heard. They fully belong and can be their authentic self. They can contribute to the collective and have a voice. So equity let's talk about that Seems to be a dirty word these days, but equity really means recognizing that we don't all start at the same place.
Ann Price:So picture a spiral staircase going up and up and up and up and it gets tighter and smaller the higher up you go. But not all of us start on the same stair step. We just don't. So equity really means recognizing that, that we don't all start in the same place, and we have to acknowledge and make adjustments to those imbalances. And that process is ongoing. It requires us to identify and overcome the intentional yes, there are intentional barriers and unintentional barriers arising from bias or systemic structures for me.
Ann Price:So several years ago I participated in Donna Beagle's Poverty Training Institute and Donna was a guest on the podcast sometime, I think early last year, and her training was so yeah, it was so amazing. I learned so much. But one of the exercises they did and you've probably seen something similar on YouTube, but she had everybody who was participating in the workshop line up in a line and then they would say whoever was leading this exercise would say things like take four steps forward if you graduated from high school. Take another four steps if you graduated from college. Take five steps back if you ever had the lights turned on in your house. Take two steps back if one of your parents ever lost their job. You get the picture right Over and over and over again. They just asked a series of questions and at the end of the exercise there were people like way in the front, hey, their family went on European vacations, they had a boat, they had all the things right To. You know, people who were in the middle, quite a few to several, and then a very few who were so far back you could hardly see them right. And so that's just a good example of how, you know, we just make the assumptions that everybody is in the same place, they start in the same place, that we all have the same kinds of opportunities, and you know that's just not true. It's just not true.
Ann Price:All right, let's talk about authentic engagement. So community engagement is defined, at least from the CDC, as the process of working collaboratively with and through groups of people affiliated by geographic proximity, special interest or similar situations to address issues affecting the well-being of those people. And over the last couple of decades, research and practice and public health have increasingly employed can't speak today community engagement. So to me, the work of David Fetterman and the empowerment evaluation work that he has done exemplifies this work, as does things like appreciative, inquiry and liberatory methods. Okay, so those are some of the principles. Now, why do we think about this? Because we're never going to reach our goals for social and public health if we don't engage communities in those works, and those principles are so, so important. We can and we must strive for engagement at all phases of our work in communities, from design to implementation, to evaluation, to learning and back again.
Ann Price:All right. So let's go back and think about our community engagement framework. The first thing we're going to do is build that foundation we're going to be welcoming. The second thing we're going to do is we're going to co create that shared vision, and there's lots of ways to do that. We can use community asset maps, we can develop a theory of change or a logic model. We can have all sorts of fun, creative, participatory ways, arts-based methods of getting people to think about their vision. And then, of course, we want to build the structure for our coalition. You know, if we don't build that foundation and by foundation I mean like things like bylaws and steering committees and you know all that boring stuff that people don't want to do and by foundation I mean things like bylaws and steering committees and all that boring stuff that people don't want to do but so, so important. And then step four is we want to develop leadership capacity. That's really important.
Ann Price:I have seen many coalitions struggle when they do not have a great leader at the helm. It really requires a transformational leader that people want to follow. But you know what? It also involves every member of the community coalition understanding that they too are a leader. It's not up to the person. You know who's kind of designated as the coalition coordinator, if you will. I remember a long time ago I was working with this one coalition and they hired someone to be the coordinator and the five folks who wrote the grant and got the coalition funded every time there was something to do, they whipped their head around and they looked at this person Okay, well, so-and-so is going to do it I won't share their name, so-and-so is going to do? They whipped their head around and they looked at this person. Okay, well, so-and-so's going to do it. I won't share their name. So-and-so's going to do that. So-and-so's going to do that, right. That idea that we are all leaders, right, is just so difficult sometimes for coalitions to really struggle with. But you know, it's not the staff's job, it's not the backbone organization's job, it's everybody's job to implement the work of the coalition. Okay, step five use systems, strategies, right. So what do I mean by that? I mean the answer to our problem is not another program, folks, right? Okay, I'll give you an example.
Ann Price:So this past weekend, or last week rather, my husband had a really sore throat, like really sore throat. By Thursday he was miserable enough to go to the doctor. They diagnosed him with well. They tested him first no COVID, no strep, no flu, no this, no that. Oh well, I don't know. You got, you know, got some. You know something going on. We're going to give you an antibiotic and call it a day. That night he woke me up in the middle of the night, could not swallow, felt like he could not breathe. Long story short, he had mono. Who knew at his age that he would have mononucleosis? You know, I kept teasing him like, okay, have you been kissing? All right, but that's a great example of how sometimes we treat the symptoms but not the underlying cause. Yes, he had a sore throat, yes, it was very irritated, but it was not caused by a bacteria not at all right and so the medicine actually made it worse, okay, so we really need to think about systems, strategies and root cause analysis, which I know I have talked a lot about. All right.
Ann Price:And then we need to be mindful of implementation. Right, that is step six. So have we implemented our strategy? Have we gone beyond programs? We're not just doing a backpack program. If the main issue in our community is poverty, people don't have access to all of the things that they need. In a backpack program. Food in a backpack is not going to solve poverty, it's just not. So we really implemented them to a really deep level, and so often that just doesn't happen, okay. And then we want to create opportunities for evaluation, learning and use. That is the final step. And oh yeah, it's a wheel. It starts all over again, right, we're never done learning. We are just never, ever done learning. Just, I want to stress the first idea that I had, which was the idea of being welcoming. I want to go back there.
Ann Price:So think about when somebody comes to your house. You're having a party or you know friends, drop by, whatever it is right. What does welcoming mean? It's more than just hello, it's nice to meet you. You invite the people in your house. You ask them what they want to drink. You make yummy, delicious food that you know that they are going to enjoy. You're not going to put I don't know, you're not going to put okra in front of them if okra is not their thing. You're going to set the table. You're going to make it comfortable. You're going to check the air conditioning. Make sure that they just feel so welcoming. You want people to feel, hey, I'm home, I belong here.
Ann Price:It's just not enough to think about or to just say to people hey, come, come to this meeting, we want you to come. That's important. Yes, that invitation, yes, it is important. But once they're there, you really want them to feel welcome. So part of that welcoming is to think about the where, the when and the how you meet. Where you meet is so important. So maybe the police department is not the ideal place if you are working on a substance abuse prevention program. You get my meaning. So where you meet is really important. It really needs to be, you know, accessible and a place where people will feel safe and want to come. And then, when During the day is fine for the professionals in the room, but that may not be for people who work during the day, maybe parents who have little ones at home. Yeah, you really have to think about when, and maybe we need to switch that up a little bit. Maybe we're going to have some meetings during the day, maybe we're going to have some in the evening, some on the weekends, maybe we're going to do Zoom or do hybrid. We're going to get super creative so that we can be welcoming and then the how right that is so important.
Ann Price:I talk about it all the time. We want to have more than meet and talk coalitions. If your meeting consists of everybody going around the room and saying what their organization is doing that month, that is not collaboration, folks. That is sharing information, and I'm sorry, I'm not sorry, sorry, not sorry. That could be put in an email. You do not need to waste precious time on giving updates. There are so many other ways you can do it. Like I said shoot it in an email, put it in a newsletter, make it a social media post, have a table where people can put out their information. There are just so many other ways to engage people than just a laundry list of who is doing what this month. Okay, so don't just invite people, you also want to go where they are.
Ann Price:So I've talked a lot about coalition meetings, a little bit about, and I could go on and on about how to make meetings engaging, and if you really want to know more, make sure you sign up for my blog, my newsletter. I provide lots of tips and tricks for you there, my newsletter I provide lots of tips and tricks for you there. But let me tell you, folks, one thing that I really, really, really don't want you to do is where you get a bunch of people and you load up in a van and you drive around the community just looking. Please don't do that. Please don't do that. I had a leader in training a couple of years ago and she was so honest. She was so honest and God love her for asking this question how do I engage community members? The simple answer is go where they are. Go sit at the place where all the older folks sit in the morning drinking their coffee and having their morning biscuit. If that's the thing in your community, right, go to the coffee shops, go to the grocery stores, go to the Little League games, go to where the folks are and just get to know them, just start having a conversation and just get to know them, just start having a conversation.
Ann Price:So welcoming just to kind of continue on that theme also means being accessible in all kinds of ways, not just in our manner and how we greet people, but also addressing real barriers to engagement. So Adis Gante founded a nonprofit called Able Mindset. He was on the podcast gosh, probably a year and a half ago maybe two years ago, I'll have to look and he mentioned that he'd been working in the community garden and that most community gardens aren't accessible and it kind of got me thinking oh my gosh, that is so true. So really be mindful of the barriers that you can reduce, whether those be physical barriers to folks who are in a wheelchair perhaps, or if they have little ones, they might need child care. If you're meeting, certainly at lunchtime or dinnertime, make sure you provide food and, if you possibly can pay for community's time, pay for the community member's time to attend your coalition meeting. You know, professionals get paid for their time and community members are often asked to give of their time without compensation, so do that if you can.
Ann Price:So welcoming also means minding your P's and Q's, because your words matter. So no one teaches this better than my colleague and my friend, elizabeth Grimm. You can check out her website so she reminds us to do things like use words like older adults, not adult, not old, rather. So use other gosh words are hard. Use words like other adults, not old, is what I'm trying to say. Use mental illness, not crazy. Don't use a disabled person, but rather a person with a disability. Rather than say rally the troops, say engage, support. So I hope that is a little helpful. Like I said, check out Elizabeth's website. She has great tools and tips and she's just fabulous. All right, so you've created the foundation.
Ann Price:You make sure that people feel welcome. You want to keep them engaged by creating a shared vision, all right. So co-creating the vision means really working with the community to design those policies, systems and environmental strategies that work for them. Grants are written with programs and strategies designed and then maybe the community is engaged. Right, Raise your hand. I can see you out there. If this is you, we've all been there. We design the program, we write the grant Yay, we got it. And then we invite the community.
Ann Price:So why should you take the time to do this? You might build a playground that no one wants in their neighborhood. My friend, susan Wolf, who's been on the podcast a couple of times and she's my co-author on our Consulting in Communities guidebook, susan has a great story where she worked with a community a long time ago and they had gotten money to build a playground. The problem was nobody was going to use that playground because there were dogs running around the neighborhood, scaring all of the kids and the adults in the community, frankly. So they were not interested in building a playground. Their problem was those dogs in the community, and so they really needed to handle that first.
Ann Price:So you really need to use the right approach or you might be fishing with the wrong hook. Right, and if we're doing a public health prevention model, we need more than hook. We need a big old net. Okay, so if we really got it right, what would it look like? If we really got it right? What would it look like? What would it take to get there? And have we done our root cause analysis? And when we do these kinds of things, if we ask the community to have this vision and then dig into what would it take to really get there? And, oh yeah, really focus on root causes, not coming up with programs, but diving in, doing that policy systems and environmental change work, doing that root cause analysis whether you use the five whys or the fishbone techniques or draw the roots there's so many ways to do this. Let me tell you folks, people have fun with the vision process. They really enjoy getting in there.
Ann Price:So what is your vision of your ideal community? So this is something that I do a lot. I teach on this all the time. I've got a blog on my website, so please go over there and check it out. I really learned this from my friend and my colleague, dr Falami Prescott-Adams. She did it in a workshop that she was doing in an organization I was with several years ago, so it's a lot of fun. I've adapted it, but it definitely comes from Falami.
Ann Price:So what you want to do is gather your folks right. Gather your coalition members, organize them into groups and ask them a very simple question what is your ideal community, or another way we phrase it sometimes, is what is a thriving community? What does a thriving community look like? And I have lots of tools. I have all these matchbox cars left over from my kids and I went to the dollar store and I got other you know toys that remind people of what is you know school kinds of things and you know and play doctor kit things, anything you can think of, animals, things like that. And I have those laid out. I give them all butcher block paper and I give them that simple question Draw your ideal community. And folks have so much fun. This is one of the most popular activities that I do.
Ann Price:And then we have people kind of think about the ideal community and what is going on in their community. So what are the systems in the community, what's their purpose, what needs to be addressed, what entities make up our system and what are the barriers going on in our community that keep us from having this ideal community? So what are the unmet needs, if you will, where are our opportunities for intervention? And once we do that we've designed our ideal community, we've done our systems mapping, we've thought about the barriers then we ask folks to make a personal commitment. Where did they see themselves fitting in this work? Where do they feel called to do this work? So you know, I know this work is hard and I want to remind you, especially these days when we kind of feel exhausted I don't know, is it just me that this really is a marathon, not a sprint. But I know that you all really want your community to be engaged and stay engaged, and you need to focus on relationships first. Remember engaged communities. Achieve health equity.
Ann Price:I often wonder what happened to those kids I used to work with in the treatment centers, and I think about my parents, I think about relatives who suffered the consequences of things like smoking-related diseases. I bet you're the same smoking-related diseases, I bet you're the same. So if you answered the question that I asked you a while ago to remember your why, maybe take a look at that again. What did you write down? What do you feel committed to today? So I have lots of resources on my website. One of them is the Coalition Self-Assessment Tool. I would love for you to go over to our website. Take a look at the resources, take a look at the Coalition Self-Assessment Tool. I think it might help you get a handle on, kind of where you all are and where you want to go next. If you want more information about working in communities, check out the book I wrote with Susan Wolf Guidebook to Community Consulting, a Collaborative Approach and I would invite you to take a look at past sessions that I've done with community leaders. I've been very intentional about the community leaders that I have invited to be on the podcast.
Ann Price:So Krista Barfeld joined me on the podcast gosh about a year ago. She is with Farmer John that's spelled J-A-W-N and she has such an interesting story. She was in the health field for about 10 years before starting Farmer John and she got very burnt out. She took a trip to Martinique and she saw something she had never seen before, which was black farmers, and she was so inspired she went back to her hometown of Philadelphia. She started a tea company. Oh my gosh, this young lady has just really done so much for her community, inspired to think about what are the possibilities when you really engage the community, when you really think about systems change, when you really build relationships to build health equity.
Ann Price:All right, everybody. That's it for my solo podcast. I hope you enjoyed it and got something out of it. Please let me hear from you how you are engaging your communities, what questions you have, what struggles you have. I would love to hear from you, as always. Please like and share the podcast and if you would be so kind, to leave a written review. That helps so much. All right, everybody. Thank you so much. See you next time. Thank you.