From HealthBegins, March 18, 2020
At HealthBegins, we recognize that everyone in our community, including our clients and partners, is working hard to navigate these unprecedented times amid a global coronavirus pandemic. As we necessarily increase the physical distance between us, the sense of isolation can make it even harder.
Unless we do this together.
To that end, we’re taking immediate actions as an organization to support our team, stay connected with you, and provide solidarity to our broader community.
This note spotlights key actions of our internal policy. (Please find the full text of our policy here). We share this in hope that it can serve as a touchstone for other organizations as they think about how to support their own teams.
First, HealthBegins staff will take a week-and-a-half-long hiatus from work (March 18 through March 27). Our team is spread across the country and, like many of you, is responding to a number of school closures, county-wide shutdowns, work-from-home arrangements with partners, and care-plan arrangements for loved ones that are all taking place simultaneously. We believe that taking time apart from work assignments to focus on family and loved ones, to establish new routines, and to be fully present for our dependents and our communities will be helpful for the overall long-term continuity of our work.
We also acknowledge that not all workers can take this approach. Since the response to this pandemic will be a marathon, however, some organizations may find a short paid hiatus from work helpful to allow their teams to center and recharge for the long haul.
Second, while we’re putting a brief pause on projects, we’re still available to connect with you. Many of you are juggling school closures, shutdowns, work from home, and care for loved ones. We’ll work together with clients and partners to repurpose or postpone tasks over the next few weeks. We will be reaching out to many colleagues and friends personally to check in over the next day or so. Please don’t hesitate to talk with us, too, during the hiatus.
Lastly, HealthBegins will host two national open calls via Zoom to offer support and solidarity to our broader community. This virus is exposing what we have been addressing all along: underlying social drivers are stressing an already broken system. HealthBegins began as a professional home for folks on the front lines, those who bear witness and work to address those upstream stressors. We can create space for them again.
To that end, we are creating a series of engagement opportunities starting this week (yes, even while we are off work), in the spirit of how we began. The first will be on Friday, March 20, from 12-1 p.m. PT and will be open to everyone in our network. We will create a space to share best practices, to vent, to connect. We welcome everyone, including community health leaders from health systems and the social sector, who is trying to focus on equity and unmet social needs during this time. From that discussion, we will create a plan of engagement to support Upstreamists for the weeks ahead.
On Thursday, March 26, from 9-10 a.m. PT, we will host another open call with our co-host, the Primary Care Improvement Network (PCIN) at Harvard’s Center for Primary Care. The call will be open to primary care clinicians, care teams, and leaders, including those in PCIN’s current cohort. This too will be a space to connect, decompress, and share tips, resources, and best practices. We invite you to join these open calls and share them with your networks.
Of course, the information we are getting daily makes this a fluid situation. We will keep you posted and will remain flexible and adaptable. Please share any ideas, improvements, or reflections you may have on any of this as we lead, partner, and support our colleagues, loved ones, and communities. We’re grateful as ever to work with you and will continue to navigate these waters upstream together.
Yours,
Sadena & Rishi
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