Thriving Together: A Springboard for Equitable Recovery and Resilience in Communities Across America.

A message from Tyler Norris, CEO of Well Being Trust

July 28, 2020

This is a kairos moment in the United States: a propitious moment for decision and action.

What we do in the next 100 days will not only determine the spread of COVID-19, but will shape the upcoming elections and progress towards our unfulfilled promise as a land of liberty and justice. The unmasking of pervasive inequity, widespread system failure, and chronic underinvestment in the vital conditions for intergenerational well-being has never been more clear.

In response to this need, over the last three months, leaders from 100 communities and organizations channeled their most promising solutions, boldest ideas, and deepest aspirations into Thriving Together: A Springboard for Equitable Recovery and Resilience in Communities Across America.

The Springboard highlights dozens of promising actions that communities, local governments, businesses, and funders can take in the wake of COVID-19 — to address physical and mental health needs, the economic and social and dislocation it has triggered, and step up to widespread concerns about the future of our democracy.

Well Being Trust convened the Springboard initiative in a funding partnership with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Foundation, along with project leadership from Community Initiatives and ReThink Health, and with the engagement of diverse networks and alliances across the country. 

Since 2017, Well Being Trust has invested over $50M in building essential capacity for the mental health and well-being movement in the United States. The Springboard leverages these investments by amplifying and accelerating action on solutions that work. It is also building political will by aligning constituencies around shared priorities.  

As the CEO of a health philanthropy during perhaps the most propitious civil rights moment of the past half-century, I carry a special responsibility, beyond our support of this broad-based work in the nation. This includes looking closely at my own values, words and deeds, as well as the actions and investments of the mission I serve. For me, in the ‘swim lane’ of Well Being Trust, this includes:

• Retaining our priority focus on increasing affordable access to quality integrated mental health and addiction care, while enforcing parity laws and standards
• Transforming the mental health workforce and expanding the reach of care delivery via community-clinical partnerships that meet people where they are, and by contributing to a new vision for public safety and health, rooted in community, culture and capacity
• Examining all our actions and investments, including via the policy platform of the Movement for Black Lives on Ending the War on Black Health and Black Disabled People

Please access highlights of key actions in The Springboard here and the full Springboard at www.thriving.us. How might this work inform YOUR actions forward? How might this platform and the scores of partners engaged lift up YOUR work towards shared goals?  You can reach the team and engage at input@thriving.us.   

While America’s movement for well-being and justice can never be codified in a single playbook, together we can spring forward with great force and direction. We can step up not only to repair, but to strengthen. The opportunity is to pursue shared priorities for the common good together, making change happen in our homes, communities, legislatures and congress — where it counts. 

Even as it remains unclear when COVID-19 will begin to subside — together we can write the next chapter in the grand story of America’s quest to establish justice and opportunity, while securing the blessings of liberty by expanding the conditions for health, wealth, and well-being for generations to come.

In spirited partnership, Tyler