Beaufort, Hyde, Martin, Tyrrell, Washington & Wilkes Counties The opioid epidemic has impacted communities across the country. Substance use can be especially hard to combat in rural communities due to limited resources for prevention, treatment and recovery. Meet local leaders … Continued

Columbus & Lee Counties The COVID-19 pandemic has been full of uncertainty and stress. Children are among the most impacted with distance learning and isolation, and experts say there’s reason to believe traumatic stress for children is on the rise.

Buncombe & Forsyth Counties Nearly 90% of adults aged 65 and over want to stay in their current home and community as they age. However, experts say that there are many barriers that are preventing aging residents from aging in … Continued

What are cross-sector collaboratives? The short answer is that these challenges 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.

  Cumberland, Hoke, Scotland, Richmond, Montgomery & Durham Counties Black mothers and babies are dying at disproportionate rates across the country. Numbers from the World Health Organization show that maternal mortality rates more than doubled in the US from 1990 … Continued

(Beaufort, Pitt & Sampson Counties) Farmers across North Carolina are facing a crisis of compounding issues that are threatening their mental health and that of their families. Farmers are among the most likely to die by suicide, compared to other … Continued

The Community Guide produced by the Opioid Response Project is available to assist communities interested in pursuing a similar process for addressing “wicked” problems using a collective impact model. While the Opioid Response Project is used as an example throughout this guide, the process, resources, worksheets, and lessons provided could be used to address any number of complex, inter-jurisdictional problems.

Focusing on social capital’s impact on job acquisition may reshape the current way nonprofits and local governments approach employment assistance. By refocusing the problem not just on how to connect job seekers and potential employers, organizations can instead look to build relationships that will open doors for employment today and in the future.

Left unattended, social capital or the lack thereof has the ability to reproduce existing inequities. It also points to the importance of addressing the systemic problems that have created these inequities. However, if social capital investments are managed correctly, they can promote equity and address historic and systemic barriers to accessing social capital.

The Opioid Response Project launched in 2018 and applied the Collective Impact Model to support local collaboratives in efforts to mitigate the opioid epidemic in their communities. The Opioid Response Project local teams all reported improvements in their ability to collaborate and developed action plans with strategies ranging from public information campaigns to post-overdose response teams, which they implemented.