the health disparities podcast

196: The importance of place: How the non-profit Purpose Built Communities helps create ‘cradle to college pipelines’

What does it take to create healthy neighborhoods that include broad, deep, and permanent pathways to prosperity for low-income families?

That question is the focus of today’s episode with Carol Redmond Naughton, CEO of Purpose Built Communities based in Atlanta.

“I really have become an  advocate for community development as a way to move the needle on  health outcomes. And I’m not talking about simply putting a kidney dialysis center in the bottom floor of a senior high rise,” Naughton says. “I don’t mean to say that that’s not a good thing to do, but we’ve got to move upstream. We’ve got to be way upstream and be thinking about: How are we building communities and supporting children, so those children 60 years from now will not need kidney dialysis?”

In a conversation that was first published in 2022, Naughton speaks with Movement Is Life’s Dr. Tamara Huff about the difference between access to health care and health outcomes and the importance of addressing the social determinants of health. 

She also calls on all of us to reflect on the systems that have kept people trapped in poverty — especially Black and Brown communities — and consider what it takes to create communities that support a “cradle to college pipeline.”

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The transcript from today’s episode has been lightly edited for clarity.

Carol Redmond Naughton: Now, I really have become an advocate for community development as a way to move the needle on  health outcomes. And I’m not talking about simply putting a kidney dialysis  center in the bottom floor of a senior high rise that might serve the needs  of the people there today. And so, I don’t mean to say that that’s not a  good thing to do, but we’ve got to move upstream. We’ve got to be way  upstream and be thinking about how are we building communities and supporting children, so those children 60 years from now will not need  kidney dialysis?

Jerry Fennell: You’re listening to the Health Disparities Podcast from Movement is Life – featuring conversations about health disparities with people who are working to eliminate them. I’m producer Jerry Fennell.

What does it take to create healthy neighborhoods that include broad, deep, and permanent pathways to prosperity for low-income families? That question is the focus of today’s episode – which was first recorded in 2022 – with Carol Redmond Naughton, CEO  of Purpose-Built Communities based in Atlanta.

Carol speaks with Movement Is Life’s Dr. Tamara Huff about the difference between access to health care and health outcomes… and the importance of addressing the social determinants of health.  She also calls on all of us to reflect on the systems that have kept people trapped in poverty — especially Black and Brown communities — and consider what it takes to create communities that support a “cradle to college pipeline.” Here’s Dr. Tamara Huff:

Dr. Tamara Huff: We’re delighted to have you. Carol, could you share with us some  aspects of how Purpose-Built Communities works with local leaders to  help them plan, implement, and sustain holistic neighborhood revitalization  initiatives that create healthy neighborhoods that include broad, deep and  permanent pathways to prosperity for low-income families and we can  break it down. 

Carol Redmond: No, no, no. I’m really glad to have this opportunity to speak with you  about our work. Thank you for inviting me to join you today. Purpose-Built  Communities is as a nonprofit organization. We were created about 12  years ago to help local leaders learn from the lessons of the East Lake  Revitalization in Atlanta, as well as what other people were doing around  the country to work with local leaders to help create really strong, beautiful  neighborhoods that became springboards, if you will, to help everybody  who lived there meet their full potential. And so, at this stage of the game,  we work with about 27, 28 neighborhoods around the country. And we  support them in a variety of ways. First, we only go where we’re invited.  So, you know, we don’t have a list on a wall somewhere that says we want  to be here or there we go where we’re invited. And so, if somebody calls  us from a city, we will tell them kind of a little bit about our view and our,  our model and our values, and we’ll learn a little bit more about what  they’re interested in trying to achieve and try to begin to ascertain whether  what we know how to do is a good fit for the goals, the local community.  And if it seems like there might be a there, there, then we typically spend a  little time getting to know one another better. And that could include my  team visiting that city and getting to know people in that neighborhood, the people who live and work in that neighborhood and understand what their  dreams and aspirations are. And we want people to get to know us as  well. We want people to know our values and know it’s important to us and  know that, you know, we know that this is going to be both imperfect and  long term, right? That this is really hard, complicated work. And it takes a  while to be able to get everything planned on the front end. So, you know,  we can work with local leaders including community members to really  think together about what do they want to achieve, and then work to  create the roadmap to getting there. You know, our model is pretty  straightforward, but straightforward doesn’t necessarily mean easy to  execute. We think about neighborhood revitalization, number one. So, we’re thinking about a place, a neighborhood, the way people who live  there think about their neighborhood. Sometimes that aligns with census  tracks, but hardly ever. It often aligns with how a city might formally define a neighborhood. But it’s really, you know, what do the people who live  there, how do they think of their neighborhood? When they think of their  neighborhood, what are the boundaries? Who are who and what are the  assets in the neighborhood? What are the strengths that the neighborhood  has that they bring to the table? And then what are the challenges and  obstacles that they want to overcome? And so, we help folks kind of write  all that down, right? So, we understand where we are, and then create a  roadmap for implementing this model that includes high quality mixed  income housing, creating a neighborhood serving cradle through college  education pipeline. Bringing the right kinds of community health and  wellness programs and facilities to the neighborhood, the kinds of  amenities that everyone wants in their neighborhood but are too often  lacking in low-income neighborhoods. And now, we think too about  economic vitality. How does money flow in a neighborhood? Who owns  the businesses? Who has the jobs? How do we create the opportunity for  people who live in that neighborhood to be owning something, whether  they’re owning their home, owning a business, owning stock, owning an  interest in a real estate fund, some way that they’re able to own something  that will help them generate wealth and hopefully intergenerational wealth  that can change their family’s trajectory long term. The secret sauce to this  though, is what we call a community quarterback organization, right? I just  talked about housing, education, health and wellness and economic  development. You’ve got to have some organization that isn’t in the  service delivery business, but is thinking about after the residents have  really created the vision for this community, how does it implement it? And  so, they’re thinking about how do you work with different public, private  and nonprofit partners to actually do the housing, and then to build that  education pipeline and create those health and wellness amenities and  think about and understand where, how money is flowing and how people  who live in that neighborhood can gain wealth as a result of planting their  flag and saying, this is going to be great for me and mine. So that community quarterback is essential. And over the last 10 years, in fact, we  have really come to appreciate the fact that you need a really robust  community quarterback organization in order to be able to execute this  work with both equity and excellence.

Dr. Tamara Huff: I’m over here just smiling from ear to ear. I hope you can appreciate  it in my voice because I’ve had the distinct pleasure to actually see one of  these purpose-built communities firsthand. I had a chance to meet Jacob Peters shameless plug for Columbia Park down in New Orleans, and it’s  absolutely phenomenal. 

Carol Redmond: It is. It really is. 

Dr. Tamara Huff: The entire, so for our listeners, I want to try to paint this picture  because it’s a beautiful facility, a beautiful community. It truly is a neighborhood that came together after Katrina, and they basically built just  what the neighborhood needed in every aspect, whether it be developing  schools, cradle, I love that cradle through college all the way through  developing opportunities for financial development. It’s just health centers,  everything that you could possibly need, workout areas, a movie theater  inside of it. It was absolutely phenomenal. So, in your panel, I love the  term that you call yourself a neighborhood is that neighborhoods are really  central to all of this and central to building out that and the concept of  having a community organization that is just building that neighborhood  around it. It’s exciting. It’s exciting. Can you tell us a little bit about 

Columbia Park? I know you’ve done so many ones. 

Carol Redmond: Sure. 

Dr. Tamara Huff: But that one again is near and dear to my heart.

Carol Redmond: Oh, I love Columbia Park. I am so proud of what the Bayou District  Foundation and their partners have been able to accomplish since  Hurricane Katrina. We first met Jerry Barus and Mike Rodriguez and Gary  Solomon in November of 2005, just a few months after Hurricane Katrina.  And these were three business leaders who didn’t know anything really  about community development at the time. They all had their own businesses, their own lives in New Orleans, but we had mutual friends.  And the mutual friend said, you all ought to go to Atlanta. This East Lake  project could be the model for part of the rebuilding of New Orleans. And  they came to the community, and we spent two days together and they  came home committed to trying to do something that nobody had ever  been able to do in New Orleans, to really create a wonderful neighborhood  that supported people in a new and unique way. And they said, we’re not  experts and we’re going to figure it out. And my board, I worked for the  East Lake Foundation at the time, my board freed up 30% of my time to  help them. And so, we were all joined at the hip trying to figure out, well,  who are the right partners? Who are the right real estate development partners? Who are the right social service partners? What do we need to  do for this organization to have the opportunity to redevelop on the St.  Bernard public housing site, a site that had eight feet of water in it for more  than three weeks after Hurricane Katrina? How did they, how did you get  the right to be able to do that? How do we need to compete with others  who wanted that opportunity? And so, we kind of took the idea that we’re  going to come up with the best plan that we can, knowing that residents  were scattered all over America after the storm. So, there wasn’t like,  there could be a planning committee at that point. So how could we take  the best things that we could think of and create a great proposal to share  with housing authority of the city of New Orleans? And we thought, if they  pick us, we’re going to be able to execute on this plan. And if they don’t  pick us and they pick somebody even better than us, that’s a win too. And  so they chose us. And when I say us, they chose the Bayou District  Foundation and Columbia Residential and Kingsley House and the YMCA  and now KIPP and all of these great partners who are committed to  rebuilding the infrastructure of that community, great housing, great  education, bringing a new early learning center to the community. I mean,  doing all this, rebuilding the infrastructure so that that neighborhood  became a springboard that propelled children into the stratosphere as  opposed to throwing up one obstacle after another in front of them. 

Dr. Tamara Huff: I get chills about it because the place is absolutely gorgeous. Carol Redmond: It is. 

Dr. Tamara Huff: And, you mentioned during the panel, and again, just thinking about  this, and I want to paint this picture for people, that this truly is a mixed  income housing. You know, this is an opportunity where if you get the new  job, if you continue to grow and you move beyond, you want, you can stay  in this community. 

Carol Redmond: That’s right. 

Dr. Tamara Huff: You can stay in this beautiful place. So you have people with every  different walk of life, they’re thriving together, having that experience  together. They’re kids interacting together. It’s truly, it’s wonderful. 

Carol Redmond: It is a beautiful model. It’s one of my favorite economic models. In  the multi-family housing there one third of the units are reserved for families who are below 30% of area median income. And they receive a subsidy from the housing authority in New Orleans. People between 30  and 60% take advantage of the tax credit subsidy from the low-income housing tax credit program. And then the top one third of the units are  market rate, whatever the market will bear. And so, you end up being in a  place where people have, you know, dramatically different incomes, but  share lots of the same interests, lots of the same values. People live there  across incomes because they want to be in a place that offers great  schooling. Right? Everybody wants their kids to be in a great school.  Every mom that I know, including me when my kids were little, I bought my  house primarily because it was near a great early learning center, right?  And so, all of those kinds of things attract people across incomes to the  community. And once they’re there, they want to stay because they’re well  served. The value proposition to everybody, regardless of whether you  pay a full market rate or a subsidized rent, everybody is paying about a  third of their income as rent. And they’re being well served by the amenities in the neighborhood. It’s a platform that really, as I said, will be a  springboard that gets their kids connected with their dreams and 

aspirations. 

Dr. Tamara Huff: And I love that because I mean, you have different incomes, but it’s  also intergenerational. 

Carol Redmond: Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Tamara Huff: You have the kids there, you have the families there with different  aged children, but you also have a senior community over there. 

Carol Redmond: And a beautiful senior community, by the way. I aspire to live in a  senior community that looks that good. And by the way, I should say you  can learn more about the Bayou District and Columbia Park by going to  their website. I think it’s BayouDistrictFoundation.org. And it’s a great  website. You can look at the purposebuiltcommunities.org website to learn  a little bit more about all the projects that we support and our way of  working.

Dr. Tamara Huff: And please, I encourage you all, because you just need a glimpse  of this. The ownership that the residents have over their spaces. Like they  want a community garden, they’re going to get a community garden and  it’s beautiful to see. And along with that, with the idea of mixed income housing, I love the concept of mixed-use areas, where you’re actually  empowering people to do better and have the resources to do better from  an economic standpoint. Because you mentioned kind of during the  presentation, during the panel, poverty is expensive.

Carol Redmond: It is.

Dr. Tamara Huff: A lot, when we talk about food deserts, when we talk about all  these things, it is expensive not having access to the basic things you  need, whether it’s transportation, whether it’s healthy foods, great healthcare. 

Carol Redmond: Yeah. 

Dr. Tamara Huff: It is expensive. And if you could just talk a little bit about how you all  are bringing that economic vitality to communities. I think that’s so powerful and so needed when we’re thinking about these diverse programs.

Carol Redmond: Well, thanks for mentioning the economic vitality work. Our network  members really encouraged us to elevate that band of work within our  model. And so, we’ve done that as part of what we call Model 2.0. And,  you know, we’re trying to continually learn and get better at what we do.  And I love it when our network members push us to do something that  they’re finding works really well in their community. And that’s why  economic vitality is now embedded in our work. Yes, poverty is expensive  and you can think about it in a variety of ways. So, if you don’t live within  walking distance of a grocery store, you may be going to the little neighborhood convenience store, the bodega, and paying somewhere  between 50 and 300% more than you would pay at a suburban grocery  store that’s offering the same kind of product. If you don’t have a car and  there’s not good public transportation, you may have to pay for an Uber or  a Lyft or a taxi, or you may have to rent somebody or pay for somebody’s  car or have somebody drive you to where you’re going. Or spend two  hours on a bus ride, that’s really a 15-minute car ride. So, you’re paying  out of your pocket or you’re paying with time, which is an even more  precious resource. This is one that really always bothers me. Laundry  facilities, so, you know, laundry facilities. 

Dr. Tamara Huff: Absolutely.

Carol Redmond: There are at Columbia Park and in most of the projects that we  support, laundry facilities are in every apartment. And you think if you’re a  mom with a couple of kids and you’re working and you’re trying to do  everything that you can to support your children in school, the last thing  you’ve got is three hours to go sit in a laundry facility somewhere in your  apartment complex or a couple blocks away in a for-profit laundry facility. You know, laundry is to be, that’s gender equity in my mind. Having  access to a washing machine and a dryer, so I can throw my laundry in  while I’m getting dinner ready or while I’m helping my kids with their  homework. And too many policies, housing policies at the state level that  govern how we allocate low-income housing tax credits don’t allow for  laundry facilities to be in people’s apartments. It’s crazy. Somehow, it’s too  good for people. So, let me get, let me think about that for a minute. Let  me hammer in. Sometimes, we have folks who manage the resources,  say, you know, bringing a value judgment, right that if you are poor, there  must be some sort of moral failing on your part. And then they start, that  leads them to be thinking that something would be too good for people.  Right. And laundry being one of them, don’t get me going on this topic. It’s  a real issue for me.

Dr. Tamara Huff: You’re spot on because a lot of times, we think of what’s too good  for the other and you otherwise people more. 

Carol Redmond: Yes. 

Dr. Tamara Huff: One of our earlier speakers during the conference actually has on  another podcast, Dr. Alicia Jackson speaks of that is who are those  others? 

Carol Redmond: Yeah. 

Dr. Tamara Huff: Who are those low incomes? Those may be your teacher. That  may be your nursing assistant. There is nothing wrong with that. There’s  dignity in work, there’s dignity in different types of work and different types  of income, in different circumstances, there’s human dignity in everyone. 

Carol Redmond: Absolutely. 

Dr. Tamara Huff: So yes.

Carol Redmond: You know, one of my mentors, Renee Glover, who used to lead the  Atlanta Housing Authority, one of my dear friends and mentors and my  former boss used to say, we are building communities for children of God  with unlimited human potential. Think about that. 

Dr. Tamara Huff: I love that. 

Carol Redmond: Building communities for children of God with unlimited human  potential. And when you think about it that way, it changes what’s too good  for people, what’s too good for children of God, right?

Dr. Tamara Huff: Nothing. 

Carol Redmond: Exactly. So, we start to think about what do people really need to  become who they’re supposed to be, who they could be? And so that  really motivates me.

Dr. Tamara Huff: Oh gosh. Me as well. And the passion just comes through because  that is what’s good enough for me, you know, is more than just good  enough for me. It should be good enough for you and for everyone else. 

Carol Redmond: That’s right. 

Dr. Tamara Huff: So again, early in our conference we talked about the Golden Rule  versus the Platinum Rule. Treating people as they want to be treated as  they see themselves as being treated, that’s the next step. It’s not just  good enough to be like what you think you want, but something that is  even above and beyond that. And I just, what you’re doing is that.

Carol Redmond: It’s interesting that you raise that now. Sometimes, when we are  invited into a neighborhood, people have been beaten down for so long  that their aspirations are really small because that’s all they’ve been  allowed to dream. Right. Because every time they’ve thought about  something bigger, they’ve been beaten back. And so, part of the work on  the front end is often really starting to develop the kind of trust that allows  you to start thinking bigger. And because, you know, people in the  neighborhoods where were invited to work dreaming came at a cost. 

Dr. Tamara Huff: Right.

Carol Redmond: If your hope gets dashed, you know, it makes it harder the next  time, right, to have a little bit more hope because you’re now, you’ve got  that experience, you’ve been hurt, and the hurt is real. So, developing the  trust and then a plan and so that when it’s time to execute, the people in  the community really believe that it’s going to happen. Now, honestly, I  would say even if they believe it, they don’t believe it until you really do it.  Right. 

Dr. Tamara Huff: Yeah. 

Carol Redmond: But getting to the point where they might say, well, you know, they  might just do it. You know, that’s a pretty good place to get to, and then, you can prove it with your actions.

Dr. Tamara Huff: I love that because I love the community-centric approach. It’s just  so powerful. And coming in and humbling, number one, you come in only  when invited. That’s huge. And then not only that, then the first thing  you’re doing is listening to what people have to say about their communities. So, they’re being heard and being heard is just so important.  People want folks to actually listen to them and to respond to their needs.  And of course, that builds that trust in the community. One of the young  ladies on the panel with you is from Ward Infinity. And one of the programs that we actually have them at our Caucus this year, verbal  gymnastics, and their whole idea of playback theater is just making you a  better speaker or better listener, so you can then understand, you understand, but also making that other person feel understood. So, bravo  to you, bravo to Purpose-Built Communities.

Carol Redmond: You’re being kind. I will share with you, you know, when I first made  the transition from kind of strict legal work and working for a fancy pants  law firm and fancy pants clients, you know, I didn’t feel like you could walk  into a room and not know the answer. Right. They’re paying you big  bucks. You’re supposed to be able to do it. And then, I learned to say,  well, if somebody asked me a question, I didn’t know the answer, well,  that’s a really good question. Let me give it some thought and get back to  you. So, you’re building up their ego. But when I moved into community  development, I brought that same attitude of I’m supposed to know all the  answers. People want me to know all the answers. And it took me a  minute before I realized that people didn’t want me to know all the answers. They wanted me to help them on their journey of understanding  what their answers were. And their answers might be a little bit different  than mine or different than in other communities, but their answers were  their answers and, it was a real growth step for me, I think personally, to  learn that I’m actually more valuable in this space when I don’t know the  answer than I am when I think I do know the answer.

Dr. Tamara Huff: It’s exactly what they say. It’s like the answers are already in the  room. We just have to open our ears, our hearts, our minds to actually  hear those answers. So, love that. And along that line, I want to circle  back to like one of your other pillars of community health because so  often, one of the things she said on your panel was you never really  thought of yourself like five years ago, you might have not thought of  yourself as being really a health organization or have any health focus, but  so much of what you all are doing is key to addressing the social determinants of health and just key to building healthier communities. Can  you talk a little bit about that?

Carol Redmond: Well, I will tell you, I used to conflate access to healthcare with  health, and it took me a minute to really understand the social determinants of health as something separate from access to healthcare.  Now, access to healthcare is still critical, and health is what happens  outside the doctor’s office. So, I had a mentor, a guy named Doug Judy,  who has led the Build Healthy Places network, who has now joined my  board, helped me understand all of this. And now, I really have become an  advocate for community development as a way to move the needle on  health outcomes. And I’m not talking about simply putting a kidney dialysis  center in the bottom floor of a senior high rise that might serve the needs  of the people there today. And so, I don’t mean to say that that’s not a  good thing to do, but we’ve got to move upstream. We’ve got to be way  upstream and be thinking about how are we building communities and  supporting children. So those children 60 years from now will not need  kidney dialysis.

Dr. Tamara Huff: I mean, absolutely. You have a truly intergenerational focus. Oh, it’s  truly…

Carol Redmond: You know we are one of our former executive board chair was  Shirley Franklin, the former mayor of Atlanta. And Shirley would, you  know, be really clear, right, that we were trying to solve big, hairy, audacious problems that were 400 years in the making and we weren’t  going to do it in three years or five years, or even 10. We could be on the  track, and we could be maybe showing some process outcomes along the  way, but this is really intergenerational work, and we need to acknowledge  that, own it, and get everybody prepared for intergenerational work. So, the expectations aren’t unrealistic that, oh, yeah, three years and you’re  done, and you’ve got, you know, everybody’s fine and healthy and we’ve  fixed racism.

Dr. Tamara Huff: No, I love that looking at the greater good, looking at decades, you  know, hundreds of years, centuries ahead into the future even so we’re  looking in the past, but also looking beyond tomorrow. 

Carol Redmond: That’s right.

Dr. Tamara Huff: Those communities then allow the structure to get healthier in having safe areas, having places where people can actually get out and  walk and feel more comfortable to be involved. I mean, that’s how you  improve the health of a community long term. 

Carol Redmond: That’s right. 

Dr. Tamara Huff: That is just so powerful.

Carol Redmond: Place matters. Neighborhood matters. We really think  neighborhood is the right unit of change because it’s where people  experience their city. And, you know, cities typically deliver services in  silos, right? You know, you’ve got the parks and rec department, and then  there you’ve got sewers, and then you’ve got police and fire and safety  over here all delivering and organized in silos. But people experience their  community through a horizontal slice of those silos. And we call that  horizontal slice a neighborhood. And so, if that neighborhood isn’t working  for people, we would argue that the city is not working either. And so, when you think about cities organizing themselves around creating healthy  neighborhoods, we think that’s going to be better for people. And I am so  proud of Atlanta’s new mayor, Andre Dickens, who is doing just that, really  prioritizing neighborhoods and thinking about how do we get to the point  where everyone in Atlanta lives in a healthy neighborhood, a neighborhood that helps them on their life journey, a neighborhood that ties them to all kinds of opportunity as opposed to being places where  hope is seldom seen.

Dr. Tamara Huff: This concept of neighborhood. I love how you come back to that  every time. Now, I do have a question. In our talks at the Caucus this year,  we’ve definitely talked a lot about neighborhoods, about community and  the importance of connection and relationship building and things like that.  It’s just, they’re so important. And granted, New Orleans, Atlanta are more  urban areas, do you all do any work in places that are more rural that also  have, where that relationship, that trust building, and that connection is so important? 

Carol Redmond: So, our work is in cities large and small. And so, we work in some  small cities like Spartanburg, South Carolina, which is an amazing  purpose-built supported community. The Northside Development Group  on the north side of Spartanburg, including Spartanburg Medical Center as  a great partner including the Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine  as a great partner really doing just amazing things. They have improved  housing conditions. Education is so much better than it was, a new  amazing early learning center serving the community that is going to  support teacher development in early learning all over Spartanburg  County. Great leadership, really exciting work. So that’s what can happen  in a small city with great civic leadership, with people like Bill Barnett and  Russell Booker and others who have stepped up to really create this great  opportunity centering residents every step of the way including on the  board of directors of the community quarterback organization. So really  just terrific work in that small city. I want to come back though, to something you mentioned about social contact and the importance of  relationships. Raj Chetty, who is an economist who runs a group called I  think Opportunity Insights has done research. He was the guy who did that  map that I showed in my presentation, the big map that shows economic  mobility, the opportunity for people to move up the economic food chain  during their lifetime. His recent research was published in an article in  Nature a couple of months ago. And what he’s determined, he said, well,  yeah, this place matters in terms of people’s likelihood of moving up  socioeconomically, but why is it that some places outperform other  places? And so, he used big data and things that I’m not really understanding the methodology behind but what he did is he determined  that the single most important aspect of somebody moving up faster and  higher than they would, than their neighborhood would predict, is whether they had friends in different socioeconomic groups. So that matters,  connection with people in different socioeconomic groups matters. So, it  didn’t matter if you were talking about black people and black people,  white people and white people, brown people and brown people, or any  kind of cross-race, cross ethnicity relationship. Lower income folks who  had real friends with higher income families, higher income friends were  more likely to move up the economic food chain than those who did not. I  mean, to me, that’s really powerful. It’s another reason for us to think  about mixed income as a way to create mixed income housing, mixed  income schools. So people really are getting to know each other and  having those friendships develop. Now, I would argue that they probably  don’t happen organically. My experience is that you need leaders in the  community who are very intentional about creating opportunities for  people in different income groups to really have authentic relationships  and build those relationships. Great school leaders in mixed income  schools know how to do that. Managers in apartment complexes and  neighborhood community leaders who are tuned into this will be thinking  about how do we build opportunities for families and children, particularly  across economic strata to build authentic relationships because those are  the things that will ultimately change people’s lives. So, how cool is that?  This all matters.

Dr. Tamara Huff: It’s so cool and the thing is, you know, that in your mind, you know  that it matters, but I love the fact that you’re giving us the data behind it.  That’s giving us the support behind it, the research behind it, that it  matters.

Carol Redmond: It does.

Dr. Tamara Huff: It really does matter. And I, like I said, I am so excited about this.  One other thing I wanted to come back to is that community quarterback  organization, the secret sauce. So, we understand that communities come  to you typically to say, hey, we want to do this, but how do you go about  developing that group of people that are really the conduits? Because  when I had the opportunity to talk with Jacob Peters down at Columbia  Park, that was the thing that he kept going back to is I helped to connect  stakeholders to help make things happen. 

Carol Redmond: That’s right.

Dr. Tamara Huff: They come up with the ideas and I help to connect the right people.  So, can you talk a little bit about that central group? 

Carol Redmond: Yeah. Yeah. So, there’s, you know, we haven’t found the best way  to communicate about community quarterbacks yet, but in some ways, I  call them both the glue and the grease in a neighborhood revitalization  strategy. So, sometimes they’re holding partners together during difficult  times, and sometimes they’re putting a little lubrication when there’s  already too much friction, right? So, they’re helping things work better in  the neighborhood. So, here’s another example that might resonate with  you. If you have ever had the experience of renovating a home, when you  do that, you typically hire a general contractor, right? You have a vision of  what you want your house to look and feel like, but you don’t know what  has to happen first, right? You don’t know whether the plumbing happens  first or the drywall, or the electrical work or the roofing work. You hire that  general contractor whose job it is, is to translate your vision into the work  of all those subcontractors. So, at the end of the day, you have a new  home or a renovated home, that is just what you dreamt of and what you  wanted to have. A community quarterback is not unlike that general  contractor, not doing all the work himself or herself but thinking about,  okay, if this is the vision, how do we plan for this? Okay? If we, how do we  plan for the housing to be developed? And what is our agenda and our,  our timeline on education? What is our timeline on health and wellness?  So, you put all the partners together, you scaffold them up appropriately,  so it might not make sense to open a school before the new housing has  been built, for example, right? You might want to build the housing before  you open your school. So, it’s all of those kinds of things, thinking about  how these things are connected or should be connected, and then thinking  about how do you change the way organizations operate in order to make  sure that they’re working together. So, let me give you an example.  Schools typically, you know, if you’re a school leader, you’re thinking  about what’s happening in your school. You’re not thinking about necessarily what’s happening in the surrounding neighborhood all the  time, even though that influences what happens inside the four walls of  the school. A community quarterback can be thinking about all those  things outside the school. And so, for example, if kids are late every day  getting to school, most elementary schools kids read at the beginning of  the school day. So, if you’re an hour late for school every day, you miss  reading every day. And, the school may not have the capacity to be able  to get everybody to school on time, but with a community quarterback organization, you can get all the other partners aligned from everybody  from property managers to YMCAs and other health, other providers to be  doing things like walking school buses for example, to be able to make  sure that everybody knows where they need to be at a certain time and  walk to school together. Or you may have a mom who has to get to work  early and leaves for work before her kids have left for school. You can  identify a neighbor to knock on the door and say, “Hey, come on. It’s time  to go. Time for us to walk to school.” I mean, all of those kinds of little  things that can make a real difference in whether kids and families are  going to thrive or just stay where they are. So, I mean, it’s thinking out of  the box. And as I said, being that glue and the grease between all of the  different partners.

Dr. Tamara Huff: Basically, they’re almost like an operational manager for this whole  thing. 

Carol Redmond: It’s like that general contractor, right? 

Dr. Tamara Huff: I love that.

Carol Redmond: Somebody said it’s almost like a C-level office in a business that  has lots of lines of business, right? 

Dr. Tamara Huff: Absolutely. 

Carol Redmond: So, you’ve got to have somebody who’s thinking about it at the top  level to make sure everything’s coordinated and working well together. It  doesn’t pay to have one line of business working really well if all your other  lines of business aren’t working as well, right? So how do you make them  all work well together? And so you’re generally leading by influence.  You’ve got to be, because you’re not, these people don’t work for you,  right? You may have an, you know, an agreement with them of some sort,  but it’s leading by influence and really helping everybody see that we’re all  going to do better together, right, if we can work in a really collaborative  way, and I would say by putting data up front, so we’ve got agreed upon  common goals that we’re trying to get to that we can align around and that  we can hold ourselves accountable for. And so, the community quarterback is helping everybody do that. All the partners do that including  everybody saying, oh, gosh, if reading is really important and we want to make sure everybody reads at grade level by third grade, I as a property manager have a role in helping to make sure kids get to school on time  because I can do that. Right? So property manager may not think much  about that unless somebody is saying, you know what, you could really  help here. And here’s how.

Dr. Tamara Huff: I love that. It’s like the concept, like you said, of the glue and the  grease. So, you’re holding everybody together, but also till you make  things smoother, and it gives you, yes, you have the birds eye view, but  then you’re also right down there in the midst of it. Yeah. So, when we  think about, a lot of times it takes a village, I think you’ve just expanded  the concept of what that village is and what, who is a part of that village.  That is just so, so powerful. We’re getting close to the end of our time  today. Could you share if you had just one call to action? Because I’ve  just enjoyed this. I have so many calls to action already, but if you have  one for our listeners in especially in 2023 that really relates to creating  purpose-built communities, what would be your call to action?

Carol Redmond: So that’s a great question. You know, my call to action is to look  with open eyes and think about the systems that have kept people trapped  in poverty, particularly black and brown people trapped in poverty and not  to blame the victims, right? To recognize that it is that these systems have  been broken so long, they have broken the place, but the people are not  broken. And if we come at it thinking about, we’re building communities for  children of God with unlimited human potential, we can create great  places and we can change the systems to make it easier to create other  great places.

Dr. Tamara Huff: That’s the best way to end ever. I absolutely love that. We are all  building something great for children of God. 

Carol Redmond: That’s right. 

Dr. Tamara Huff: And that’s amazing. So, thank you so much.

Carol Redmond: Oh, my pleasure, Tamara, thank you so much for this.

Dr. Tamara Huff: Thank you for sharing your insights with us on the Health  Disparities Podcast today. It, it truly has been an honor and a pleasure  sitting across from you today.

Carol Redmond: Right back at you. This has really been a great conversation for me  too. Thank you for the opportunity.

Fennell: Thanks so much for listening — if you enjoyed this rewind, be sure to subscribe to the Health Disparities podcast, so you don’t miss future episodes. We’re on Apple, Spotify, and all major podcasting platforms. Also, give us a follow on social media – including new accounts on Instagram and TikTok. Find us at Movement is life, Underscore, Inc on both platforms. I’m Jerry Fennell. Until next time, be safe and be well.