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North Sound ACH

North Sound Accountable Community of Health

Archives for January 2022

Enter the Year of Radical Imagination

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The end of 2021 was something you just can’t prepare for. One hundred year floods and record breaking windstorms, on top of a new COVID variant was not how anyone in the region wanted to slide into 2022. On November 15, disastrous floods and storms hit our region with such force it toppled most emergency response agencies. 

Our first indication of this was when Jose Garcia of Everson was swept away in the early hours of flooding after clinging to a tree in a parking lot for several hours. He was on the phone with his family desperately trying to be rescued, but the rescue never came and tragically Mr. Garcia was the first casualty of the floods. All disasters are chaotic in the early hours and days of response, but it was clear that without additional agencies stepping in to support community members, more lives would be lost. 

In Whatcom County, the days that followed the flooding were full of late night calls from community partners who were rescuing, literally rescuing people, from rising flood waters in their homes and cars. There were minimal shelter options at the stage. I called Liz Baxter, our CEO, immediately asking permission to start booking hotel rooms, and her immediate response was “of course.” 

In partnership with Community to Community, Christ the King Church, Catholic Community Services, and the Whatcom County Health Department, we collectively sheltered over 30 families and nearly 100 people in area hotels. Each agency rose to the occasion and regardless of knowing if reimbursement was possible, just doing what was needed for folks who had lost nearly everything. 

In the spirit of targeted universalism, we know that all communities should have resources to be prepared and protected against emergencies and disasters – but if we have learned anything over the last two years, a one size fits all emergency response strategy can have devastating effects on communities that are repeatedly impacted. Community health workers and Promotoras are at the heart of a response, and fiercely dedicated to the communities they serve. They are doing the work often unpaid and unseen. We want to change that in 2022, by leveraging our positions of power and connections to advocate for those workers who are the backbone of community resiliency. 

Though these last two months have been some of the most challenging work of my career to date, I am profoundly grateful for each and every one of our staff who stepped into this work immediately. We’ve also learned so much about secondary trauma lately, and are prioritizing self-care for the team in 2022. It’s time to expand the practice of emergency response from a solely patriarchal practice to a model of community well-being and belonging. North Sound ACH does a pretty awesome job on advocating for the latter, so I have high hopes that 2022 is a year of bridging and radical imagination.

— Nicole Willis, COO

We Can Do Better

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It has been such an amazing experience to be part of an organization intentionally created to be a disruptive influence. To be asked to challenge the status quo and to advance equity, even when it unsettles us. 

I like order and process, logic and strategy. But sometimes the need for all that order gets in the way when people in the community are hurting. We can’t always wait for the perfectly planned solution in order to meet needs. In other words, we cannot sit idle while people around us suffer. 

I have had many opportunities to bear witness to the creativity and generosity of ordinary people, stepping out of their daily routine to help communities in crisis. Many of you know that North Sound ACH has embedded targeted universalism into our work — agreeing on a universal goal while employing multiple strategies for diverse communities to reach that goal. Whether we’re talking about our application and hiring process, or how to get food to people displaced by flooding, there are always multiple approaches that can meet the needs of people in need. It does require us to keep remembering our universal goal, and not get caught up in whether we agree or not on specific strategies.  

I try to describe choices as always having tension. Imagine a large rubber band in front of you, one end is choice 1 and the other is choice 2. In reality, all along the rubber band are options, if we choose one, it pulls and strains on the other options. There are few perfect answers, but many options that have an impact – positive to some, challenging to others, depending on our perspective. We constantly have to ask ourselves, who is impacted by this decision (or indecision); who does it advantage or disadvantage? Whose voices have shaped and influenced the decision under consideration?

We are in the middle of multiple disasters and must find ways to keep people at the center of our goals and objectives. Processes should support our end goals, not get in the way of meeting them.

We need to do better. The person next to us might need our help and compassion. The child in front of us might be our doctor or mayor or librarian in 25 years. Our job is to prepare others to lead. At least that is my job, and I am grateful to have it.