North Carolina ranked as the 30th healthiest state in the nation in 2022. It ranked 38th in health behaviors, 30th in health outcomes, 22nd in socioeconomic factors, and 9th in physical environment (air and water quality, housing, transit).
North Carolina ranks in the top 10 states in the U.S. for the number of people 65 and older. Aging population issues include increasing healthcare costs, inadequate mental healthcare, social isolation, ageism, elder abuse, inequitable access to resources, the need for affordable and accessible housing and transportation, burdens on family caregivers, and caregiving workforce needs.
Partnerships between academic and community researchers can have significant challenges. On March 2, 2023, as part of UNC Community Engagement Week, ncIMPACT Initiative and the Carolina Across 100 Initiative hosted a session, “Um, Who is the Expert Here? Valuing Lived Experiences as True Expertise,” to explore the issues.
We support cohorts of communities working in tandem with our approach and sharing their experiences along the way in peer learning forums. As university partners, we design the process for individual teams to build collective capacity to address their challenge, facilitate the peer-learning forums, identify needs for and secure specific substantive or technical skills for individual teams or the entire cohort, support implementation of evidence-based strategies for addressing the challenge, and institute evaluation processes that each team executes. The lessons described are drawn from three projects: the Opioid Response Project (ORP), myFutureNC Local Educational Attainment Collaboratives, and Our State, Our Work: Connecting Young Adults with Their Future.
What are cross-sector collaboratives? The short answer is that these collaboratives tackle challenges that are too complex for any single individual, organization, or even sector to solve alone. Sometimes referred to as “wicked problems,” addressing these challenges requires a wide range of expertise from diverse stakeholders working in the non-profit, for-profit, and government sectors. ncIMPACT Initiative specializes in bringing these stakeholders together.
Coming off a busy holiday season, it’s probably clearer to many of us just how strained the American labor market is right now. Maybe you had to wait in a long line to check out while doing your Christmas shopping, or some of the ingredients for your Thanksgiving meal weren’t available on the shelf at the local grocery store. Maybe a friend wasn’t able to attend a holiday party due to a flight cancellation because of limited crew, or some packages were late to arrive on your doorstep. In each case, we can point to a tight labor market that’s yielded fewer workers where we need them, and disrupted the normal flow of goods and services to which we have become accustomed.
Research has found that the EITC increases participation in the labor force, particularly among single mothers, and reduces poverty. But its impacts are generally restricted to families with children. An expanded EITC for workers without qualifying children might similarly encourage work and reduce poverty among these individuals.
We might argue about the extent, but there is no question that learning loss is a concern and that local communities are scrambling to respond. Even so, despite the challenging outlook, the ncIMPACT Initiative at the UNC School of Government remains optimistic about cross-sector innovation efforts, and the remarkable resilience demonstrated by those on the front lines as they adapt and evolve in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.
During COVID-19, social capital is proving to be a necessary ingredient for positive health and economic outcomes.
Local government leaders are on the front line, helping their communities navigate a health and
economic crisis whose duration is uncertain. The ncIMPACT Initiative’s COVID-19 survey sought to track
how these elected and appointed leaders viewed their early COVID-19 world—and the actions they
were taking to respond.
