1702-12962

Arizona: Continued support to Asian Pacific Community in Action (APCA) to act as a lead convener in the Maricopa County (great Phoenix) community as part of the Grassroots Engagement Strategy. With a focus on providing services, advocacy, and education for diverse communities in Maricopa County, APCA works through community based partnerships to facilitate a multi-stakeholder network supporting improved health for Asian Pacific families across greater Phoenix. APCA’s community engagement efforts in phase II culminated in the design and release of a resident-developed Community Organizing ToolKit and Resident Leadership Pilot Program and an Advocacy 101/102 curriculum and workshop. Currently, APCA and the local oral health network’s core group are building the community organizing capacity among residents/consumers, which will result in direct community advocacy and engagement in Phase III. Through the organizing and leadership pilot, the advocacy 101/102 workshops, and focus groups in storytelling style, APCA captured the community’s vision and informed the strategic plan for Phase III. APCA’s proposed activities in the upcoming year blends together the utilization of community organizing, media strategies, and issue tracking to transform the oral health systems that result in greater equity in three broad categories included in the Community-Driven Oral Health plan: affordability and comfort, trust, and transparency. APCA community organizers will inform a series of oral health media campaigns and efforts to track issues that keep the general public informed and invite them into ongoing oral health advocacy efforts. Issue tracking activities will support the community organizers to develop population and geographically focused strategies, while also working with the local oral health network in Phoenix to shape and share relevant issues. An overarching goal of this coming year is to challenge the mainstream narratives and connect social justice concepts into concrete actions that lead to meaningful oral health policy and systems change in Arizona. $100,800 will be used to support APCA personnel time to oversee network development, travel and meeting expenses, support in-person and remote convenings, contracted services for meeting facilitation, and stipends to support the community organizers. This proposal aligns with the Oral Health 2020 Goal 6 of improving the public perception of the value of oral health to overall health and the target that oral health is increasingly included in health dialogue and public policy.