Policy & Practice | December 2021

PRESIDENT’S MEMO continued from page 3

influence in decision making. People– youth, parents, families, community leaders—must be the lead architects. And, we—as human services leaders— must be able to see the unvarnished truth of how people and communities experience the systems we run in order to deconstruct and reconfigure them to work for everyone. For public systems, being more proximate to people is like building a new muscle—it requires repetition and daily practice. At the core of this work are the following: n Equity must drive our policy deci sions. We need to prioritize historical and current inequities. As Derrik Anderson, Executive Director of Race Matters for Juvenile Justice and APHSA Board member, shares, we must be truthtellers—always asking ourselves as systems leaders—who has benefitted and who has been burdened by our policies and prac tices? And, as Derrik also notes, to get there we must constantly strive for a shared language and understanding. n We must understand power within the context of who has social and economic power. In our July Leadership Corner, Dr. Darrick Hamilton shared his very personal journey that illuminated how much White dominant norms shape our approaches, social norms, and everyday decisions (listen at https:// www.aphsaleadershipcorner.com ). n We must assign greater value to qualitative, not just quantitative, data. While we have made progress in recent years in moving from outputs to outcomes, our public systems continue to be over-reliant on numbers. These data detract from our ability to fully hear what com munities have experienced and how it relates to what they actually need, let alone captures the community assets that can help build well-being for everyone. We must get underneath the stories that stand in our way. I continue to be struck by the power of narrative—both

good and bad—and why it is so important to understand dominant narratives and social norms at their roots. As author and advocate Heather McGee so effectively captures: “Everything we believe is based on a story we have been told,” (listen at https://www.aphsaleadershipcorner .com ). Understanding how narrative has shaped systems and built bias and racism into our structures is a first step in deconstructing the way we are and how we are as a country. Put another way, if we only see the trees, we have only part of the plot line. To under stand our full story, we need to ensure we have the entire forest in our line of understanding how policy decisions and actions show up in that story line across generations of our nation’s history. This includes understanding how social norms are shaped by those with power. n Recognizing the impact of propa ganda on our dominant narrative. For too long, we have described propaganda as a thing of other nations, rooted in the history of another time and place, where autocratic leaders used disinforma tion to saturate knowledge. The fact is that propaganda has deep roots in our own racist history as a nation, promoting default thinking that has elicited negative cultural tropes generation after genera tion. And, in today’s world of social media, because we have just as much access to misinformation—much of it intentionally false—we must be mindful of its impact on our collec tive efforts to advance social and economic mobility. Oxford Professor Phil Howard shares tools on how to mitigate the impact of disinforma tion campaigns (listen at https://bit.ly/APHSApodcast). n Recognizing that binary stories that focus on one group in comparison to another is also problematic—it ignores the multiple identities that each of us holds, and the ways in which our lives are shaped by what sight. To do so, requires: n Being intentional about

we experience across our lifespan. For more on intersectionality, I encourage you to check out our most recent Leadership Corner featuring Renata Soto and John Simpkins (listen at https://www .aphsaleadershipcorner.com ). Building common ground is the core of our democracy. As a bipartisan membership organization, at our core, we are about building common ground so people and the communi ties in which they live can thrive. Our members and partners come from a wide range of backgrounds and perspectives across the political spectrum. Each year we consider the factors that impact the ability of health and human services leaders to deliver on the mission of their agencies. The highly polarized landscape inevitably makes our annual list as a barrier, but we are committed to working with and through our members to try to transcend that divide. What constantly gives me hope and inspires our team at APHSA to lean in, is the way in which leaders in our field show up every day with a resolute focus on their mission and a desire to continually learn from each other irrespective of different ideologies and approaches. And, what particularly stands out for me this year is just how important human services is to the foundation of a functioning democracy (see our Cornerstone briefs at https://bit.ly/CornerstoneHome21) and the degree to which our working together—across red, purple, and blue states and communities—is part of assuring the future of democracy in America. We are humbled and grateful to work in support of human services leaders and the ways in which each of you contributes to the public good every day. We look forward to continuing to support your mission and impact in 2022 and beyond.

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