What we heard: Community feedback on the intended outcomes of our purpose-driven strategic plan

In 2022, Health Forward announced a five-year strategic plan (we call it our purpose plan) that recast our leadership, advocacy, and resources to advance and promote health equity through initiatives focusing on racial equity and economic inclusion.

Health Forward has always sought to work with, not for, our community partners — a distinction that focuses on shared power and the trust we have in people and communities who are closest to health injustice issues. But we haven’t always incorporated that lens into our evaluation and learning efforts. As we implement the practices of the Equitable Evaluation Framework™, we are being more intentional about pausing our work to ask for, and reflect on, stakeholder and community input.

As a part of our strategic planning process, we determined what outcomes we wanted to see as a result of our work. And as a part of this process, we paused to ask for community feedback. We know that not everyone may see things the same way we do. It’s always important to check our assumptions.

Thank you to all who responded to our survey last year regarding this topic. We have read and reflected on these results and are using them as a data point to inform our future work.

Here is a summary of what we heard: