Continuous engagement with communities, many of which have been low income communities of color facing complex and inter-related emerging issues, has led to the use and refinement of a variety of methods that increase a community’s capacity to solve problems collaboratively. RAC methods support informed and collaborative change at the hyperlocal level, and the development of residents capable of advocating for their hyperlocal needs in a broader policy environment that increasingly requires them both to be conversant in the data through which their community is evaluated and to have a higher level of media and technological literacy than is typical of residents in low income communities. RAC prepares communities to speak for themselves in their own voice while both respecting the wisdom of lived experience and leveraging 21st century technology. 

Aggregated data obscures and invalidates the trauma of lived experience. RAC seeks to raise the voices of underserved communities so that hyper-local census block group and census tract level issues that are obscured in county level aggregated data can be addressed by a whole of society unity of effort with community leaders fully prepared to be at the table equipped with the charts, maps, testimonials and information they need to effectively describe their community’s situation, and which residents have developed the capacity to create.

RAC methods are neutral, and can be applied to any problem that arises. The current problems to be solved are not only the devastating numbers of cases, hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19, but also long-standing problems that are being exacerbated by COVID-19. RAC methods can be applied to as yet unknown future challenges because encouragement and support of continuous collaborative innovation is at their core. We do not know what future problems may arise, but we can build capacity now, even in the midst of crisis, to confront them.  

RAC methods:

• Identify effective civic and natural leaders.
• Identify trusted anchor institutions.
• Respect and strengthen existing effective formal and informal leadership in the community. 
• Develop new leaders. 
• Work with community leaders to refine and localize tools and methods so they work for their community’s culture(s).
• Bridge the digital divide by training residents to use free and open source technology.
• Maximize interpersonal communications about the good of the community, the health of those in the community and the condition of essential functions of the community, 

RAC methods support the capacity of communities to collaborate to solve their own problems in a whole of society unity of effort. Specifically, RAC methods support:

• inclusive hyper-local (census tract and census block group level) issue identification, 
• information gathering that provides fact-based decision-making support,
• community dialogue informed by data gathered and best practice identification,
• inviting all to participate in the identification of proposed solutions,
• welcoming those with expertise specific to the community’s identified issues into community dialogue regarding proposed solutions,
• work group collaboration at all levels and across all levels of society, 
• effective project management,
• whole of society multi-sector dialogue that includes government to support the development of policy and legislation that create change 
• continuous innovation.

Identification of Effective Civic and Natural Leaders

Both civic and natural leaders are essential to the successful development of a RAC site. Understanding who you are looking for is critical. The wrong messengers will not be able to establish a RAC site quickly, and will not be able to pull the community together around current issues. For this reason, groups that are already engaged in addressing COVID-19 and its many secondary and tertiary effects must be identified and supported as they find that they do not have the capacity to address the complexity of the syndemic alone, and must work with others.

For speed and efficiency of a scaled response to COVID, the following method of initiating a RAC site is being used.

1. National convenings are held to which representatives of networks engaged in fighting COVID are invited promote a national dialogue regarding the whole of society unity of effort RAC is working to coordinate. These gatherings serve as a community of practice with a best practice sharing environment and a recruitment opportunity to populate work groups with specific subject matter expertise at the national level to inform ongoing RAC management and governance.
2. The network representatives, after hearing about work being done at RAC sites and being exposed to the tools and methods of RAC, interact with their network members to identify potential RAC sites, some of which are exemplars of best practices. RAC sites, whose activity is catalyzed by RAC immediately, are typically: 

• Multi-sector Partnerships already engaged in collaborative problem solving related to COVID, and leveraging resources to do so with an anchor organization that is trusted due to its work in the community and is a trusted fiduciary. An anchor organization with prior management of state or federal funds is preferred due to the capacity that has been created to do so. These partnerships are almost universally stretched to their capacity and in need of tools and methods that support increased productivity and community engagement.
• The multi-sector partnership may be a public-private entity, and in all cases thepartners having strong Mission Alignment among themselves and with RAC  
• The organizations involved will either be connected to or comprised of committed local leaders, who have long personal histories in the community These local leaders may have several generations of their family in the community, and they are likely to have schoolmates from middle or high school in the community as well. They are respected in the vulnerable populations they serve, and have demonstrated the capacity to engage multi-sector partners in productive problem solving that has benefitted their community.
• Solid institutional project administration and management skills (intuitive or formal) that have engendered trust from the community, with confidence in the institution as a trusted fiduciary.
• RAC leadership, in order to move into action quickly, should include civic leaders working well with natural leaders, who are:

• Effective communicators
• Community conveners, who educate residents about current issues, including health issues
• Informal mediators in the community
• Working effectively in coalition and/or have built coalition(s)
• Experienced project managers/administrators 

It is helpful if collaborating organizations working with RAC are from different sectors. These usually include:

• Academia
• Business
• Civic Organizations
• Community Based Organizations
• Education
• Emergency Management
• Faith
• Health
• Medical
• Municipal or County Government
• Social Services

1. When potential RAC sites are identified, a web presence is created for them so they can immediately begin amplifying authoritative and accurate information about COVID. 
2. Connectors to potential RAC sites and potential RAC site leaders are invited to attend a RAC Introduction training offered regularly by registration through the Events calendar on resilientamericancommunities.org. This training allows connectors and potential emerging RAC site leaders to ask questions and to develop an understanding of the tools and methods of RAC that are most needed in their geography. Connectors refer appropriate local leaders to take the RAC Introduction Training.
3. An emerging RAC site leader becomes the Community Coordinator associated with the site. The Community Coordinator interacts with a RAC Liaison who engages in localization, a co-design process that puts the face of the community groups they are engaged with on their RAC dashboard and provides them with role descriptions role descriptions to constitute a core leadership group that can move RAC tools and methods deeply into the community. These are a Technical Lead, a Mapping Lead, a Teaching Lead and an Outreach Lead.
4. The core leaders chosen by the Community Coordinator then register for the trainings that support the use of the tools and methods they will be using to engage in collaborative problem solving.
5. The Community Coordinator and core leadership team then begin hosting weekly virtual meetings open to all collaborating partners that include a status update on COVID in the community.  

Specific Community Engagement Methods used in RAC Communities are the subject of training for the community’s core leaders and for any collaborators engaging to provide technical support, such as students from local universities, volunteers or staff from anchor or partner institutions.

 

The Slide Presentation on RAC Methods Used for Training (2.5.2021)

 

Listening Sessions

Listening sessions have been conducted virtually during the COVID pandemic. This has necessitated distribution of smart phones and tablets to residents who must be trained to use them to participate on Zoom calls. In some cases pastors hosted masked an socially distanced viewing rooms in their churches so people without the ability to access Zoom could participate. 

 If asked, a RAC Liaison will assist community leaders with the framing of their Listening session. This may include directing Community Coordinators and their core leadership team to data that is already well visualized for their geography or that can be mapped or graphed to communicate well. It may involve directing Community Coordinators and their core leadership team to RAC slide presentations that can be copied and adapted for local use.  

The purpose of a Listening Session is to create a safe space where the concerns of the community can be shared. This involves listening to and documenting residents’ observations and opinions. Notes taken reflect the language residents use to describe their challenges and concerns. Best practices identified, potential champions with a passion to lead efforts on specific issues as well as the cultural values expressed are all documented by 2 or more scribes trained to listen for key words and concepts. 

Listening sessions are conducted as a precursor to engaging in project co-design with community leaders. The notes taken at Listening Sessions provide detail on themes discussed. This may include: major participants, important geographies, historic references to similar or related community work, and which topics have passion and energy around them. The notes are captured using Google Forms, and the results spreadsheet is shared with the Community Coordinator and Whomever the Community Coordinator would like shared in. The notes can be attached to the Agenda at subsequent planning meetings so the voice of the community can be recalled.

Gap and Solution Analysis

Gap and Solution Analysis is specific discussion regarding the vulnerabilities, service gaps and resources lacking in the community with a discussion of potential solutions envisioned by the members of the community. Community members are asked within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, to identify gaps in critical social functions and to propose solutions to fill those gaps. A chart is created with a column for gaps on the left and a column for solutions on the right. 

If gaps are identified for which no potential solution is proposed, then it is left blank. Subsequent meetings to focus on those issues can be scheduled with community partners that may have specific expertise or knowledge to address them. If potential solutions are proposed, then champions and budgets are discussed. Participants are asked if they would serve as champions to explore implementation of the potential solution, or if they could identify a public official or community leader with an interest in championing this proposed solution or a similar proposed solution. A general ballpark figure is discussed to implement the solution, and any champions that have stepped forward would begin work on resourcing and fleshing out the proposal.

 

Asset and Liability Mapping

Residents, who have been trained to use the free and open source Google MyMaps share their screen on a community Zoom call. They ask the people on the call to identify community assets and resources related to the current disaster. Prior to COVID, people would gather at community forums to identify assets and liabilities on flip charts. Google Maps is being used now. For the COVID syndemic, assets may include cold storage, food storage space, food distribution centers, test sites, vaccination sites, hospitals and field hospitals, sources of masks and sanitizers and other resources. Liabilities may include businesses or event spaces where masking and social distancing are not respected, facilities closed for professional sanitizing, and known hotspots.

Residents can receive maps on their phones by text when they are updated so they can take advantage of new opportunities or avoid places that may be unsafe.

Outreach Co-Design

Co-design is a RAC liaison working with community leaders to determine the best methods, schedules, languages and culturally appropriate materials to engage in information and data sharing and gathering, including any templates, instructions and materials RAC partners have made available. Co-design is used to determine outreach strategies that are the most supportive of ongoing community efforts or community-identified goals, and that are likely to be the most effective. During Co-design, Community Leaders identify additional key leaders, work to create appropriate incentive and stipend structures and determine what technology will be used in the community.

Outreach Co-design pairs community relationships with data and determines the incentive structures that drive civic engagement. Typically the Community Coordinator and the Core Leadership Team know of personal networks and community events where people can be surveyed, and have contact information for many people who for reasons of age or disability are unable to participate even in virtual events. In addition, Community Cordinators and Core Leaders know who is willing and able to assist with outreach, if church members would like to function as a group with compensation being donated to the church, if there are group ministries likely to want to pitch in, and the level of hope or despair in the community that affects the ability to motivate people into action.

RAC Liaisons can train community leaders where to find very specific demographic data regarding Social Determinants of Health including zip code profiles to neighborhood and census block group level that assist in determining what language flyers should be printed for specific areas of the community, the language navigators or surveyers working in the community should be able to speak, and where to find people in the categories eligible for vaccinations, who may not have media or technology literacy or transportation that would enable them to both register for the vaccination for which they are eligible and arrive at the vaccination site to receive it.

Use of MOUs at all levels of Civic Engagement

All levels of civic engagement in resourced community projects use MOUs to assure mutual accountability. This reinforces the anchor institution’s coordination capacity, establishes agreement on the Schedule of Tasks for which each participant in the community is responsible, and achieves project deliverables on schedule and on budget.

MOUs are used to establish agreement on the schedule of tasks for which each participant in the community project is responsible, their point of contact, the estimated hours to complete the tasks, the amount of compensation they will receive and other details.

Citizen Science & Hazard Mapping

Citizen Science engages residents in field work by using instruments to take measurements of air, land or water to monitor physical and chemical hazards in their community. Residents learn the elements of a Quality Assurance Project Plan, how to document physical measurements using verifiable and time-stampe records and maintain a verifiable chain of sample custody. 

Citizens also learn how to understand graphs, charts, tables, units and the basic science relevant to their community’s challenges so they are equipped to discuss the environmental hazards in their commmunity with subject matter experts and decision-makers.

Dashboard Support for Survey Outreach

When communities want to gather information by surveying, there are two methods for which there is dashboard support: (1) Free and open source Google Forms link posting for which the community will provide analysis and reporting and (2) Survey links within the Medical and Public Health Information Sharing Environment (MPHISE) for which MPHISE provides analytic support.

Google Form surveys are most appropriate when there is no personal health data being collected, and when the community has analytic support from a local university or volunteers with analytical skills and backgrounds.

MPHISE surveys are most important for (1) any survey which asks for personal health information and for (2) survey efforts that are undertaken at all RAC sites, the analysis of which is extremely useful to provide context and comparisons across geographies, and for (3) communities without local partners providing analytic support for any survey effort they may undertake.

Regardless of the method used to enter and analyze data, the dashboard can provide links to the forms needed to manage a community outreach team and document incentives associated with surveying.

Trust Network Development

Trust networks work to keep COVID-19 out of their homes and neighborhoods by encouraging behaviors known to decrease viral spread and by learning to use the early notification system to isolate early after exposure notification.

RAC recognizes and respects existing trust networks in communities. In low income communities trust has worn thin under the onslaught of COVID. In some locations public health officials are not trusted bcause they represent the government, and in others trust is now confined to close groups that had middle and high school experiences together, people of the same church community and members of fraternities, sororities and professional groups that share a commitment to service or science. For this reason, RAC liaisons seek out existing Trust Network leaders. The goal is to secure commitments from organizational leaders to work for consensus within their organizations to participate in a project to mitigate the effects of COVID-19 in their community. 

Trust networks are identified in faith, youth and other civic groups. These networks are encouraged to participate in using the state early exposure notification apps, to check in on one another, to support each other in the event of exposure to COVID-19 or a positive test result, and to have a representative at the virtual weekly RAC site meetings to report on their network’s activities.

Serious Games

Serious Games use known facts about the present, and on-going trends, to create possible real-world simulations of pandemic scenarios that may arise. During the game, we role-play community reactions and responses to real-world disaster scenarios.

 

Identify gaps that surfaced when responding to the scenarios and deliberating on proposed solutions to those gaps. Presentation of proposed solutions to a response panel of decision-makers`opens community dialogue around solution implementation.

 

Simulated Solutions of the COVID Pandemic take place on Zoom. When participants arrive, they are in one Zoom room where a Meeting Introduction and Overview occur. Residents are welcomed to the space, and there are introductions. The concept of the COVID-19 syndemic simulation is introduced, with a discussion of complex interactions of legacy issues with current health, economic and social challenges. The project and purpose of the Simulated Solutions exercise is presented, and there is an Overview of the day’s activities.

 

The Game Master provides game instructions and an induction that acquaints the players with their roles in the event and opens the game session. There may be two scenarios in inter-linked parallel play: the professional EOC Scenario and the Community Scenario. Each participant is placed in a Breakout Room. If there is an EOC breakout room, at least one representative from each participating trust network serves as an observer.

 

The Community Scenario will place players in Breakout Rooms by communities that are likely to be responding to crisis together. Each Community Breakout Room has a Facilitator and a Recorder present throughout the morning simulated scenarios (1hr 45 min) who record the gaps identified by the players in responding to the scenarios. 

 

At the end of the simulation, all community and professional scenario participants meet to discuss the gaps that emerged in the game that they were unable to address, which are called “Mission Critical Gaps.” If there was a Simulator from the EOC Professional Scenario there is an EOC report as well as a the Breakout Group Spokesperson report from each Community Scenario Breakout Room. 

 

The Mission Critical Gaps identified are used to create Solution Teams for each gap or group of related gaps. All participants decide which of the Solution Teams they will meet with after Lunch for Solution Team discussions. Solution Teams are groups that focus on specific topics, and are not based on any one specific community. For example, Solution Team topics may be: Public Health Equity, Housing,  Community Action and Public Policy; Empowerment, Safety and Security; Emergency Management; Communications and Education; and Infrastructure and Basic Necessities. Observers from the EOC Professional Scenario will also be a Solution Team. Participants indicate their Solution Team choice. 

 

Facilitators and Recorders are assigned to each of the Solution Team Breakout Rooms. Each Solution Team Room has at most 5 – 10 members. 

Facilitators run the conversation about specific gaps discovered during the game, and the Solution Team provides proposed solutions to resolve the gaps.

Recorders document the discussion, and prepare a summary for a Spokesperson to report  to the Response Panel and the assembled participants in the Plenary Session.

 

 

Solution Team Presentations are made to a Response Panel in the Plenary Session: Each Solution Team gives a 5 – 7 minute report stating the number of gaps and associated solutions they identified and the associated proposed solutions to be implemented to resolve the gaps.

 

A Response Panel comprised of local decision-makers comments.The purpose of this Response Panel is to begin a collaborative process with the hierarchical institutions at the city, state and higher levels that are essential to pandemic management in the relevant geography. Each Response Panelist has 5 minutes to respond to the Solution Team reports. Response Panelists may include elected officials, representatives from city or county departments or small to medium-sized businesses and organizations.

 

The closing statement and next steps presented by the RAC site host indicatethat the proposed solutions will be taken up at RAC weekly meetings that participants are welcome to attend.

 

In this example of a Serious Game, the collaborators identified by their logos at the bottom of the image include RAC, the RAC anchor institution in the geography, the faith and service provider LTDRO which has approximately 70 organizations on its roster, the Monority Chamber of Commerce, the HUD lead continuum of care agency in the region, an educational service provider, the LGBTQ Center, the Emergency Management Department and the local Health Department. RAC sites work to bring people and organizations together so expertise and resources are coordinated to support the health and safety of the community. 

 

RAC Weekly Meetings

RAC weekly meetings vary from site to site. A typical weekly meeting agenda includes:

• A status update on the progress of COVID in the community from the technical/data team with information regarding new guidance released or new resources developed, with an explanation of the dashboard and its embedded maps for any newcomers..
• Any guest speakers present
• Reports from each active Work Group
• Reports from Trust Network Leaders in attendance
• Discussion of upcoming events and strategic intervention planning
•  Close

Trainings

Virtual trainings are provided through the Event Calendar on resilientamericancommunities.org. Although all trainings are not offered every week, the trainings offered to support emerging RAC sites are:

• RAC Introduction
• RAC Processes (Methods)
• Using the Resilience System
• Trello Basics
• MPHISE Dashboards
• Community Dashboard Editing
• Google Maps
• WhatsApp
• Zoom
• Joget
• Fulcrum
• Google Forms