From the Roots Up: Community Voices Leading the Way
2026 Summer Learning Series Overview
The Collective for Health Equity is offering its first ever learning series. This will be a mixed-format, community-centered learning series designed to elevate community-defined expertise, spark honest conversation about navigating a shifting landscape, and build meaningful connections between community-based organizations (CBOs) and advocates. Rather than centering a single expert, the series will share our collective wisdom and lived experiences. Community showing up for community.
Sessions will vary in format – panels, open mics, dialogues, and interactive workshops – so no two feel the same. Each session will engage CBO representatives as panelists, facilitators, workshop leaders, and active participants based on expressed interest and session fit. Our hope is to elevate the innovative solutions CBOs are finding to provide Community-Defined Evidence-based Practices (CDEPs) to their community and improve health and wellbeing in a challenging time. This series is also meant to be refreshing, almost therapeutic in its opportunity to share, grieve, and discover amongst those who hold similar values.
The series will be held on the 4th Thursday of each month at 10am HST, 12pm AT, 1pm PT, 2pm MT, 3pm CT, 5pm ET, 6am ChST (the following day for Guam and CNMI).
- June 25 | Session 1 – CDEPs Open Mic: Sharing What Works
- July 23 | Session 2 – The Lifecycle of a CDEP: Seeding to Sustaining
- August 27 | Session 3 – Creative Sustainability: Doing More with What Exists
- September 24 | Session 4 – Storytelling and Community Visibility: Getting the Word Out
Interested in sharing your CDEP during the series? Sign up here!
Session 1 - CDEPs Open Mic: Sharing What Works
June 25, 2026
Format: Community Open Mic + Forum
What is working within communities? This session will create a welcoming, community-led space where organizations can lift up the practices, stories, and solutions that are helping their communities heal, connect, and move forward. The session centers community and that evidence lives in culture, relationships, lived experience, and practice.
Session 2 - The Lifecycle of a CDEP: Seeding to Sustaining
July 23, 2026
Format: Multi-CBO Panel + Q&A
What do Community-Defined Evidence-based Practices (CDEPs) look like from idea seeding to implementing and sustaining? Useful for communities that want to embrace CDEPs but do not know where to start, this session will bring in organizations at different phases of their CDEP journey – early adopters, those in the middle of implementation, and those sustaining long-term.
Session 3 - Creative Sustainability: Doing More with What Exists
August 27, 2026
Format: Panel + Solutions Workshop
How are CBOs surviving and thriving in the current landscape? This session will focus on practical, creative strategies CBOS are using to navigate funding changes including braiding funding streams, retaining staff without burning them out, and finding ways of working within systems to expand resource access. CBOs can come with their specific questions as an opportunity for peer-to-peer problem-solving/solution finding within workshopping time.
Session 4 - Storytelling and Community Visibility: Getting the Word Out
September 24, 2026
Format: Strategy Session + Spotlight
If we do good work but we don’t share it broadly – did it even happen? Community-based organizations are doing powerful work, but the people who need their support do not always know where to find them. This session explores creative strategies for visibility, storytelling, and outreach, including social media, short-form video, podcasts, streaming platforms, local radio, influencer partnerships, and community ambassadors.
We’re inviting community-based organizations to share their community defined evidence-based practices (CDEPs) throughout the series. If your organization is planning, implementing, or sustaining one of these programs or practices and feels like a good fit for the series, please submit an interest form!