The first webinar of DASH’s four-part series on Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) offered an overview of the principles and tools used in the ABCD model. Registration is available for the remainder of the series.

It is essential to include the people with the experience in research and action related to health, public health, and social determinants of health. But it’s also important to carefully consider what is meant by “inclusion,” and to ensure the term and its initialism do not become an objectifying shorthand.

DASH is looking forward to hosting a free four-part webinar series on Asset-Based Community Development, starting in March, 2024. The series will be presented by Darryl Answer of Verge Solutions and Ron Dwyer-Voss of Pacific Community Solutions, as well as their DePaul colleague Indigo Bishop.

The Biden administration published an important trio of publications affirming the importance of multisector collaboration across social care, health, and public health systems, and we at DASH could not be more pleased.

Focusing too much on the problems of a community makes it seem like residents are helpless victims who can’t take charge of their own lives. It implies that help can only come from the outside, which then prevents community members from defining their own future. Asset-based community development (ABCD) stands this narrative on its head.

We love expertise. It entertains us. It gives us hope. We trust it. We love expertise so much, we even quantified it: 10,000 hours of practice. That’s what it takes to become an expert. Strangely enough, there’s an important part of life where we don’t trust the experts to make decisions for us. But that might be changing in the State of Washington.

RECoDE was launched in partnership with data.org, Data Across Sectors for Health, Health Leads, and the National Alliance against Disparities in Patient Health. The project aimed to better understand how to undo antiquated and dangerous data systems and build in their place an ecosystem that provides all communities power over where, when, and how their data is used to improve individual and community outcomes.

In our own efforts at DASH to center community voice and expertise—and to make these types of partnerships more visible—we’ve invited community members with the lived and living experiences of poverty and related, social determinants of health to advise us, as we plan for our upcoming All In: Data for Community Health National Meeting (AINM).