Healthy San Gabriel Valley (All in for Azusa)

A regional movement committed to cross-sector collaboration supporting a local initiative to reduce multiple forms of violence in the city of Azusa.

PROBLEM: Silos Hamper Opportunities to Fight Multiple Forms of Violence

The city of Azusa, east of Los Angeles in the San Gabriel Valley, is home to 50,000 diverse residents who experience a higher risk of poor health outcomes and reduced life expectancy due to high rates of poverty and trauma. These outcomes have lingered over the years due to gaps in data, limited organizational coordination in the region and silos holding back progress. Addressing these challenges would require a concerted effort between many parties from multiple sectors.

SOLUTION: Bridging Sectors to Holistically Address Complex Inequities

To take on this challenge, community partners across multiple sectors came together to work to establish a healthier, safer, more resilient region with the capacity to tackle its most complex social and health inequities. The community chose to embrace the ACH model, creating Healthy San Gabriel Valley (HSGV). HSGV focuses its collaborative power on the city of Azusa, a community with high need and many opportunities to address multiple forms of violence.

The city of Azusa serves as a lead entity for HSGV’s prototype project All in for Azusa. HSGV’s primary backbone organization, YWCA San Gabriel Valley (SGV), provides administrative support and core leadership for the regional collaborative. Through YWCA-SGV, HSGV coordinates a Regional Steering Committee consisting of cross-sector partners and a “Design Team” focused on strategy. All in for Azusa mirrors this organizational structure. Additional working groups engage residents, coordinate data, build capacity and work toward establishing a portfolio of strategies. Resident involvement is at the core of the movement, ensuring that interventions work for every segment of the community.

ACH IN ACTION: Building on Existing Assets to Magnify Protective Factors

All in for Azusa has adopted multiple strategies to reduce violence and its impact on the community, embracing evidence-based approaches that aim to strengthen protective factors that lead to improved outcomes at the individual and community levels. These factors have been shown to help reduce multiple forms of violence—and improve overall health.

On the individual level, All in for Azusa facilitates stronger family support services, social connections and new skills to solve problems nonviolently. On the community level, it offers improved coordination of services, increased access to mental health and substance abuse services and local policy work, such as a housing element, parks planning and a Pedestrian Master Plan.

Operationally, HSGV focuses on building on existing assets of programs and services to provide increased access, delivery and follow-through. This integrated approach has led to a convergence of initiatives across the city—and San Gabriel Valley—that energizes working group and fiscal sustainability efforts, breaks down siloed approaches and improves complex data systems. These holistic efforts encourage data sharing and improve data usability, all while ensuring HIPAA compliance.

NEXT STEPS: Leverage Partner Capacity to Expand Geographic Reach

ACH organizers are working to establish a community center that serves as a seamless hub for services, offering residents full-time systems navigators that can help residents take advantage of all available resources. By successfully leveraging the ACH’s collaborative network in Azusa, HSGV aims to attract resources to scale this model for neighboring cities to address their unique challenges.

Learn more at www.hsgv.org.