In 2001, the University of Texas School of Public Health (UTSPH) Brownsville campus began clinical research to identify and quantify what health risks existed in Brownsville. The school found that 80 percent of residents were either obese or overweight, one in three were diabetic (50 percent unknowingly), and 70 percent of residents had no healthcare coverage. UTSPH formed a Community Advisory Board (CAB) to speak about the findings and promote change in the Brownsville community. This case study tells the story of how a team involving UTSPH, the CAB, the City Health Department, and a local community worked together to create the Brownsville Farmers’ Market, followed by an integrated network of initiatives including an annual weight loss event, an open streets program, policy changes, and a bike plan.
✴︎ Available only with purchase from publisher “Traditional governance, even when it is functioning effectively and fairly, often produces clear winners and clear losers, leaving smoldering resentments that flare up whenever there is a shift in the balance of power. Over the past two and…
“Initially, governance networks were intended as tools for making public governance more effective. Yet, scholars have argued that governance networks also have the potential to democratize public governance. This article provides an overview of theoretical arguments pertaining to the democratizing impact of governance networks. It…
“Social impact bonds, a recent innovation in social finance, are designed to harness capital and knowledge from private nonprofit, for‐profit, and public entities to address pressing social problems. Although there is great policy interest in understanding how social impact bonds can be used to tackle…
“Research on open strategy suggests that shared knowledge through collaboration can generate co‐created value. We explore this idea by assessing it as a predictor of absorptive capacity (ACAP) in cross‐sector partnerships in pursuit of social innovation. The findings of our study indicate that aspects of…
“The public-private food assistance system (PPFAS) emerged during the 1970s to address ‘emergency’ food needs and has since grown into a regularized social welfare system of grocery and meal provision and related program delivery, realized through the collective efforts of organizations and individuals. We explore…
“The public pays for and provides an incredible amount of data to governments and companies. Yet much of the value of this data is being wasted, remaining in silos rather than being shared to enhance the common good—whether it’s helping governments to stop opioid addiction…
“In our latest City Accelerator guide, ‘Resilience, Equity, and Innovation,’ we share the tools and processes four cities, Pittsburgh, Saint Paul, San Francisco and Washington D.C., explored in an effort to increase equity and fund infrastructure. With new approaches to managing public resources, these cities…
“It’s still early days for governments experimenting with pay-for-success (PFS) projects, in which governments ask private funders to foot the bill for social programs, and then agree to repay those funders if the programs achieve agreed-on results. As public budgets tighten and social challenges remain…
“Social impact bonds—also known as ‘pay-for-success’ contracts, since they are not true bonds, but rather performance-based contracts—aim to help governments experiment with new ways of providing social services. The basic concept is this: Private investors provide the original funding, and the government only pays if…
“Traditionally, statutory regulation was viewed as the primary mechanism for achieving environmental and social change. Its uniform system and top down implementation was expected to engineer social and environmental change at every location. However, this vision never constituted an entirely satisfactory empirical account of the…