Post From Expert Insights
Share this post!
We are halfway through 2026, and it has already been a year that asks a lot of everyone working to build healthy communities. We wanted to take a moment to look at where we see our sector standing, and where BHPN is heading.
Organizations working to develop healthy communities are navigating one of the most challenging environments in recent memory. From our perspective at the intersection of different sectors, public health, community development and healthcare, we see each struggling with shifts in federal funding, attacks on equity-focused work and uncertainty around the future of long-standing institutions. Many of the communities we work with are feeling the strain and so are the organizations that work with them.
It does feel however that despite, or perhaps because of this shifting landscape, multi-sector collaboration has become more important than ever. And it is this context that has shaped our work and development of a new 2026-2028 strategic plan.
We are deeply grateful to the partners in the field that supported this development, engaging in conversations, one-on-one interviews, surveys and more. We heard clearly what the field needs more of right now, that is more coordination, support on putting ideas into practice and an infrastructure for multi-sector efforts. This shaped both our plan and the energy we bring to it.
Some things haven’t changed. Our mission has evolved but its heart remains the same. Through this process we sharpened it, responding to the realities of what the work is asking of us right now. We remain committed to uniting across sectors to advance community leadership and cultivating the conditions for health, opportunity and belonging. We support the agency of communities committed to building and transforming the organizations that work with them.
BHPN has long been a convener, bringing sectors and people together to share knowledge and strengthen partnerships. We want to build on that by making a conscious shift from convening for connection, to convening for coordination and action.
This process also gave us the chance to name the values that guide how we work. We show up as a change agent, naming what’s not working and championing what could be. We lead with care through equity, knowing that caring means transforming the systems that perpetuate harm. And we hold to learning and responsiveness, approaching our work with humility and sensemaking alongside our partners and communities.
We have four pillars for the next three years:
Better Data, Better Decisions
Today’s data practices leave communities as subjects rather than authors of their own evidence. We will champion approaches where communities own, control, and benefit from data about their own health and neighborhoods. In practice, this means building training models that get proven practices into more hands and validating what works as we curate shared resources the field can draw on.
Building the Movement
Isolated efforts struggle to create systems level change. Practitioners often leave our convening inspired but asking “now what?” We aim to strengthen the connective tissue of the field creating platforms that emphasize action rather than learning alone. We’ll create easier onramps for new partners while committing to the multi-sector relationships and advocacy that we have always held in our field building.
Deepening the Impact
Over the years we have encountered no shortage of wonderful and inspiring case studies. Less often do these case studies give practitioners a sense of the “how” in their own context. BHPN will go deep on a focused set of critical issues, tracking what works, for whom and under what conditions, and making this learning usable for people doing the work. In practice, that looks like reinventing our convenings as platforms for action and building multi-sector working groups around the shared challenges our partners are facing.
Investing in Changemakers
Lasting systems change requires investing in the people who are doing the work. Yet consolidation, constrained funding and loss of experienced leaders are quietly eroding the talent and institutional knowledge the field depends on. BHPN will build the infrastructure to support and scale practitioners’ development through training tracks, cohort based learning and clear pathways for lasting engagement that develop and sustain the next generation of multi-sector leaders. We see this as building real professional infrastructure for the field, where cross-sector leaders can grow, find peers and stay connected to the work over time.
This plan and our continued work will only be as strong as the relationships and partnerships that bring it to life. We want this to be a direction that we are moving toward together with our partners. This work is built in the community.
The challenges in this moment are real. We are ready to meet this moment and are grateful for a strong and dedicated team at BHPN that works alongside us.
We’re excited for this journey. We hope you’ll join us.