While many think of the Bay Area of California as the center of big tech and wealth, take me back to its Port truck drivers. Working an average of 11 hours a day, waiting in long lines at the Port of Oakland to pick up their loads, truck drivers in the Bay Area were isolated—living in the rigs they decorated with photos of their children and families. You can guess all of the reasons this is unhealthy—stale air, diesel fumes, no bathrooms or opportunities for physical activity, just to name a few. Their days consisted of sitting.alone.
And then driving cargo to a destination.alone.Like poor air quality, poor ergonomics and lack of physical activity, is also linked to poor health. Alternatively, people with more social connections and are more likely to say they are in good health.Back then, I was a campaign director advocating for environmental and occupational health protections for communities and workers. Part of my job included “walking the line” with faith leaders, visiting these truck drivers as they sat in their cabs and waited in long lines outside the Port to pick up a load. Some of them were recent immigrants working to support families back home.
Most of them made low incomes, barely living paycheck to paycheck after paying for the cost of their $250,000 (or more) rigs. All of them worked grueling hours. We asked about their families, brought them food and water, faith leaders provided blessings, and we all encouraged them to get out of their cabs to socialize with each other. We also helped them advocate for access to bathrooms, cleaner air, and the power to improve working conditions. Although I’m no longer out “walking the line,” I’m still helping to support communities to build social connection and power, particularly for low income residents and residents of color who are especially affected by poverty, systemic racism, and other challenges.Here’s what this looks like at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF).
RWJF’s “north star” is so that everyone, no matter who they are, where they live, or how much money they make, has a fair and just opportunity to live the healthiest life possible. We aim to build capacity in communities to enable them to remove social and economic obstacles to health,. Investing in PowerWe have a long history of support for “community power building” in tobacco cessation, access to health care, childhood obesity, and, more recently, school discipline and worker rights. Just a few examples include:.In 2004, we funded, which worked intensively with low-income and Native American communities and with communities of color to build coalition campaigns for tobacco control policies.
Support for community power building has always been a part of our work to improve health. That said, our more explicit focus on health equity is necessitating a new and more explicit focus on community power building.
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation County Health Rankings
Walk With UsA call for proposals (CFP) was released, deadline: September 24, 2019, to build an understanding of the range of methods applied in innovative and effective community base-building that result in changes to community-level social, economic, and physical conditions that we know influence health and equity.Base-building is a set of strategies and activities used by residents, workers, consumers, and other constituencies to build collective strength and power to address a variety of inequitable conditions in communities.