Healing & Resilience: Building a Leaderful Health Ecosystem

TEAM REFLECTIONS

Healing & Resilience: Building a Leaderful Health Ecosystem

by Tina Ramirez Moon, Senior Program Manager of Healing & Resilience

As the social sector braces for the impact of federal budget and policy changes, HCF continues to reflect on who we are and what we are about. When our evaluation framework took root during the pandemic, we planted the seeds for our approach to Healing and Resilience, which centers local leadership, healthy organizations, and collaborative relationships in all that we do. While we draw from our lived and professional experiences in our service region, we make no assumptions about the compounded crises and uncertainty our communities have faced and how that impacts the day-to-day work.

To us, “healing” and “resilience” are explicit orientations towards building organizational capacity and cultivating a leaderful health ecosystem that transforms “what is” into “what is possible”.

Acting on What We Learn

As Resemaa Menakem and Prentis Hemphill i We recommend reading Resmaa Menakem’s “My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Healing our Hearts and Bodies” and Prentis Hemphill’s “What It Takes to Heal: How Transforming Ourselves Can Change the World”. have reminded us, trauma, if left unaddressed, compounds. Transforming ourselves and our systems happens most effectively in the context of relationships. This idea shapes our work.

Since 2021, our evaluation framework has helped turn community insights into practice by:

Hosting community roundtables to foster connection and collective strategy

Piloting Resilience grants to strengthen organizational culture, operations, or systems.

Investing in resources such as AMPT Chicago and the Mission Sustainability Initiative.

One long-standing HCF partner advancing this work is Brighton Park Neighborhood Council (BPNC). As a grantee partner since 2018 and part of our first and second multi-year funding cohorts, BPNC has led community-informed, justice-oriented policy advocacy in our region.

Building a Bigger "We"

In 2024, we convened regional community leaders focused on building civic power, a key social driver of health, in their communities. We aimed to “build a bigger ‘we’” by strengthening relationships across aligned, though distinct efforts—some emergent, others with deeper history and infrastructure.

That November, we brought a delegation of community leaders, local resident physicians, and HCF staff and Board members to Race Forward’s Facing Race conference in St. Louis to learn from multi-sector systems change efforts and take cues from our partners on the way forward.

A powerful moment was a fireside conversation with Eric Ward, EVP of Race Forward, who reminded us that moving in deep solidarity across differences requires a shared identity, one rooted in humanity, abundant vision, and collective purpose.

Looking Ahead

That call feels more apt than ever as it helps us gather the clarity and courage to lead through the unprecedented moment that our communities face today.

We continue to root in relationship with our partners and in our commitment to a resilient local health ecosystem, where organizations, and the people who power them, have what they need to lead, heal—and thrive—now and for the long haul.