What does it take to build a California where everyone has the opportunity to be well?
As Cal Wellness begins implementing Building the Power to Be Well, members of our Board of Directors reflect on the vision behind our new 10-year strategic framework and why investing in community power is essential to advancing health.
Our strategy recognizes that health is shaped not only by access to care, but also by who has the power to shape the decisions and systems that affect their lives.
In this video, board members share what gives them hope, why community leadership matters, and how Building the Power to Be Well creates new possibilities for healthier, more equitable communities across California.
Video transcript:
Alex Johnson: I am excited that we are moving from really planning, intense period of planning, to implementation. And what excites me about building the Power to Be Well is that this is an act of hope. It's an act in investing in a future we might never fully see. This strategy says to our partners, we see We see you, we hear you, and we love you. And that's important that we are showing and bearing witness to the work that our grantees have done day in and day out across communities in California. I'm so grateful to our really amazing board of directors that has been just incredible stewards of this work, working alongside staff with community partners to make sure that we are fully powering this work.
Katherine Katcher: What gives me hope about the future of The Power to Be Well is that we are putting power and decision-making back into the hands of the communities that we serve across California, and we are centering the importance of self-determination and ownership in those communities and by those communities.
Virginia Hedrick: I think the thing that I find most exciting about the Power to Be Well is it doesn't assume that every community has the same level of resources. To achieve wellness. It's really about building that from the ground up and all the ways that we know impact health around communities that are disproportionately affected, around people who, people who have money and don't have money, and where that power rests, both, you know, being elected to an office, but also at our more local levels as well. I think it's important to address race, power, and money to improve health because those are the drivers that all communities are looking at. Racial disparities impact everyone, even if it's not your own racial category. We're all neighbors to each other. And I think that's something hopefully we've learned in this country and globally as we've all lived through a pandemic that some of us didn't live through that and some communities were disproportionately impacted by that. And folks who have resources fare better in those kind of emergent times. So yeah, I think it's incredibly important that we focus on the areas that impact health the greatest.
Kaci Patterson: For the foundation, when we look back 15, 20 years from now and wonder, what, what happened at Cal Wellness that made them become? I really believe that all of the work that's reflected in the roadmap of implementation for The Power to Be Well, we will look back and say, that's where it was. So that's really what excites me about the new framework. The power to be well, the new work that we are about to embark upon and undertake, is that it is so full of imagination. It is so full of possibility-making. And what it gives communities the opportunity to do is to self-determine those possibilities.
Xóchitl Castañeda: Que este sueño tenga un plan. Ahora nos toca llevarlo a la acción. Y estoy segura que en esa acción los valores que han sido la semilla no solo van a florecer, van a ser regadas esas semillas, pero se van a multiplicar porque vamos a lograr inspirar a otras organizaciones filantrópicas a otros grupos que son parte fundamental del quehacer y del ser de esta fundación.
(There has been a community consultation to turn this dream into a plan. Now it's our turn to put it into action, and I am sure that in this action, the values that have been the seed will not only flourish, but those seeds will be nurtured and multiplied, because we are going to inspire other philanthropic organizations and other groups that are a fundamental part of the work and essence of this foundation.)
Ernest J. Wilson III: In my experience in working with people across the country and around the world is that one of the challenges for those of us who have a specific interest in healthcare or other kinds of health issues is that we want to appeal to the broadest base of Americans who want to understand the relationship between power and healthcare. There are some people, I suspect, who will say there is no relationship, so why are you trying to confuse us with health on the one hand and power on the other. And my experience is that those things are intimately related.
Irma Cota: I think that collective action is the thing that comes to mind in terms of building power to be well, but also recognizing the race, money, and power that have either influenced individuals to do well in not just healthcare, but in building wealth. And we have a better understanding of what triggers are in terms of the negative, as well as what triggers on the positive side for, for building wellness. And so that enhanced understanding of the intersection of three things, I think will help us be a better foundation so that we can have more impact and deeper impact with the dollars that we flow into the community.
Terence Mulligan: Despite the complexity of the issues we've all been confronting, our strategy planning process actually started with a really simple question: question: How do we expand health and wellness for the people that live every day furthest away from it? Over time, we heard the answers to that question, and they came from people all over the state of California, from researchers, grantee partners, staff, board members, and others. As board chair, I've seen up close how Building the Power to Be Well emerged from all of these conversations and insights. And experiences. That's why I'm so proud of the work, so confident in our strategy, and so excited to see it come to life for the communities we serve in this state.