Oregon Health and Education Collaborative

🌟 #ThrowbackThursday 🌟 Reflecting on an incredible Year 1 of the Upstream Initiative! A heartfelt thank you to each of our Design Pilot and Learning Community teams for collaborating to build community-driven models for early childhood success across Oregon. We also want to acknowledge our amazing facilitators, Clarice Bailey and Diana Bianco, and researchers Beth Green and Lorelei Mitchell with the PSU Center for Improvement of Child and Family Services, for their invaluable expertise and unwavering commitment to this initiative’s success. Together, we laid the groundwork for what’s possible in the first 1,000 days of a child’s life—addressing root causes like poverty and housing instability with upstream investments in health, education, and family support. From learning workshops to strategy sessions, each of you contributed essential insights, transforming local challenges into scalable solutions. Swipe through for snapshots from our final Learning Collaborative meeting—where community voices were at the heart of every conversation. Here’s to building on this momentum in Year 2 and making Oregon a place where every child can thrive. 💙 #UpstreamInitiative #ChildSuccessBlueprint #RaiseUpOregon #CommunityDriven #EarlyChildhood

A huge thank you to the amazing funders who made the first year of the Upstream Initiative possible! Your belief in this community-driven effort has laid the foundation for lasting change, and we're excited to continue building on this momentum. Thanks to your support, we’ve been able to launch pilot programs across Oregon that have empowered communities to create their own tailored plans for supporting families, addressing key issues like poverty, housing instability, and health inequities during the critical first 1,000 days of a child’s life. We couldn’t have done it without: » CareOregon » Cow Creek Umpqua Indian Foundation » Larry & Jeanette Epping Family Foundation » The Healy Foundation » Meyer Memorial Trust » M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust » Moda Health » Shelton H. & Mary I. Duff Fund of The Oregon Community Foundation » Spirit Mountain Community Fund » Willamette Health Council » Yamhill Community Care As we look ahead to the next phase of our work, we’re energized by the progress made so far and the impact we can achieve together. There’s so much more to come, and we are thrilled to continue transforming the future for Oregon’s children and families. Together, we’re making sure every child gets the best possible start in life! #UpstreamInitiative #First1000Days #CommunityPowered #ChildSuccess #ThankYou #OregonFamilies #ExcitedForWhatsNext

Health and healthcare, the economy, our cultural narrative, policies and political leaders; it's all been built on systems of power and oppression linked directly to race. This is our history in the United States. We see the effects, and the intact systems in many cases, still today. Mike Green gave a very well-researched overview and compelling narrative, all through the lens of Black women, today at the Oregon Public Health Association conference. He spoke the truth with courage and clarity; here are just some of the texts he referenced in his keynote.

What if it was the system’s responsibility to be ready to support all families’ needs, instead of families’ responsibility to navigate the (often complicated and fragmented) system? That's the question behind the All:Ready network, founded by Health Share of Oregon and housed at Clackamas County's Children, Families and Community Connections. Kari Lyons recently shared the All:Ready journey with other members of The Collaborative's #UpstreamInitiative. We're inspired by their work to envision a family-centered regional early childhood network - and we think you will be, too! 🔗 Watch the highlights here: https://lnkd.in/g2pjuVi7

"We have our best opportunity to support thriving adults by focusing on the first thousand days." - Kali Thorne Ladd, CEO of the Children's Institute Our work to align health care, education and community to collectively re-imagine how we support children during the First 1,000 Days of life wouldn't be possible without visionary leaders like Kali, who we're incredibly fortunate to have on our board of directors. Kali has a long track record of working to transform early learning and healthy development for children and families in Oregon, and she and the Children's Institute have been instrumental in shaping our #upstreaminitiative. Check out this short video to hear more from Kali about why it's time to change how we invest in children. https://lnkd.in/gDVZ_amV

The Cow Creek Umpqua Tribe has a fasciniating history, with deep Oregon roots. In the 1850s, following the Rogue River Indian Wars, when the U.S. Government forcibly removed indigenous folks from the region, the Cow Creek Umqua Tribe sent a young male scout by horseback to survey the situation on the reservation. After he returned, stating that the location was inhospitable and the conditions dire, seven families decided to stay back and survive in the wilderness of their native lands in Douglas County. They did exactly that, and although in the 1950s the U.S. Government refused to recognize them as a formal tribe, by 1982 the surviving tribal members were finally given the recognition they deserved. Shortly thereafter the tribe acquired $1.5M, purchased some land, started a bingo hall, and eventually grew the Seven Feathers Casino and Resort that many Oregonians have visited or at least driven past. We are sharing this story because the Cow Creek Umpqua Indian Foundation awarded $7500 to the Oregon Health and Education Collaborative to fund our development of a Chid Success Model in Lane County as part of our #UpstreamInitiative. We are thankful for the grant and the trust they have placed in us to ensure every child, born into every family in Oregon communities, has what they need to thrive. We also honor the resilience, perseverance, long standing history, and continued generosity of the Cow Creek Umpqua Indian Tribe.

One strength of the #upstreaminitiative is that we have half of Oregon's counties represented and aligned around a shared vision focused on the first 1000 days of life. In this video, Kristi Collins describes one program that has demonstrated success in reaching families during this precious and developmentally vital time. https://lnkd.in/gYjytj9d

This week, our Design Pilots and Learning Communities came together from across the state for engaging discussion and shared learning. Led by community-based expertise, we are building strategies to ensure every child and family has the support they need in the first 1,000 days of life. #UpstreamInitiative

Today the Marion-Polk Design Pilot engaged in cross-sector envisioning of a Child Success Model as part of the #UpstreamInitiative. These folks are the service delivery providers, the leaders, and ones with lived experience. They articulate a vision that includes flexibility in service delivery, a strong and supported workforce that has access to continued education opportunities, strong cohesion between services, and linguistically responsive care. We talked about family navigators and coaches, trauma informed training, community resource centers, and postnatal behavioral health as an automatic offering. Once in a while money was mentioned, but more often folks talked about the need for flexibility in how and when services are delivered, alignment and coordination among the efforts, partnership between agencies, sharing of information, and other system wide changes that folks are ready to make!

We have learned a lot about Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) for the past two decades. More recently, there is research generated about mitigating factors, those protective factors that give us resilience. These have been termed Positive Childhood Experiences (PCEs). This research is promising as it gives us a vision for making systemic change that ensures our families and communities have the support to withstand challenges and trauma. At the same time, disparities exist in one's experience of these protective factors. A newly released study by conducted by The HOPE National Resource Center and partners, published in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) showed that income levels, sexual orientation and gender identity, and racial background influence PCEs. The study states that 38% of adults with a yearly income of $15,000 or less reported high PCE scores versus 62% of adults with a yearly income of $50,000 or greater. This is a statistic we can do something about when there is the political and social will. There is enough for everyone and our youth should not have to suffer the chronic duress of not having the resources they need to be well. What were some Positive Childhood Experiences you enjoyed while growing up? What do you wish you had access to? Learn more here: https://lnkd.in/g7EsUf7B