Building Trust within Communities: Listening and Acting with Understanding

This week I had a virtual meeting with a community partner where we decided to have a casual conversation over tea. This person is the executive director of several mid-sized medical service programs surrounding my personal service area. The director had a clear understanding of communicating community needs, operationalizing programs, and accessing resources from the affluent community. I was struck by her ability to navigate such complex systems in, what felt to me, like authentic advocacy for the people her organization serves. As our conversation continued, I found myself exploring the ideas of how to establish community trust in the institutions that we are building. Both of us serve disenfranchised communities that have historically struggled with frail infrastructures and transient institutions. From that conversation, I wish to begin envisioning and discussing what it takes to build an infrastructure for a community that has been otherwise forgotten, beginning with how organizations can promote trust between themselves and the community.

As a social epidemiologist interested in health equity, I am interested in the ways in which social factors impact health outcomes. One key factor in this equation is trust. Evidence shows that as people are more meaningfully connected, they have higher levels of trust in-between themselves, and with the institutions within the community. When institutions and organizations earn the trust of the people within their community they are more likely to utilize their services, advocate for their needs, and feel empowered to make changes in their own lives. Ultimately, leading to a reduction in individual and collective stress and improving well-being and health. (Keep an eye open for a future post about how social relationships promote positive well-being.)

Here are some ideas for establishing trust between your organization and the community.

1. Listen for the root causes of community social problems: Community problems are highly contextual. For the most part, understanding social problems in a specific community requires some intuition to identify. As a social worker, we refer to this intuition as 'practice wisdom'. Being embedded in a community and working alongside its constituents and residents, reveals the everyday problems which a community faces. This intuition of understanding social problems can later be assessed through more systematic forms of research, but the context of how those problems are experienced should never be forgotten.

2. Examine systemic problems: This point builds up the previous but asks organizations to engage in critical analysis of the social problems at hand. Key culprits to examine are dimensions of economic disenfranchisements, such as low wages, lack of land ownership by residents, inaccessibility to healthcare, inaccessible safe public spaces, lack of affordable and safe childcare, too few or no grocery stores, inaccessibility to legitimate financial institutions and an overabundance of predatory lending.

3. Understand and address historical racism and discrimination: In our communities, infrastructural systems (economic, governmental, human services, etc.) have a history of rendering communities of color invisible. A simple, yet still inadequate, way to begin understanding the historical nature of systemic problems for people of color is to review the documents used for redlining in your community. You can find these documents for your community at Mapping Inequality. And remember, this only scratches the surface of the problem.

4. Practice Transparency and Communication: Provide clear and accurate information about your institution and the services it provides by establishing transparent processes, policies, and priorities that are accessible to all constituents. It is important to clearly communicate the motivation of your organization and what your organization can and cannot do. No one organization can do everything, so communicate the scope of services and activities that your organization engages in.

5. Engage in Inclusive Decision Making: Find an equitable way to incorporate community constituents in your organization’s decision-making process. Engage in regular community outreach and consider developing a community advisory board to prioritize community needs and perspectives. Be sure to practice in a culturally humble manner that is responsive to diverse needs.

6. Foster Partnerships and Engage the Community: Prepare for sustainability. Ask yourself if there is a history in the community of organizations coming and going. All organizations strive for sustainability but engage in self-reflection to examine their motivations. Does your organization intend to continue to be in service to a community? Where do you expect your organization to be in five years? To effectively establish trust between an organization and community means planning for sustainability, staying when things get hard, and communicating when things are chaotic and uncertain. Developing key partnerships can help your organization weather difficult times.

Building trust between organizations and communities is a crucial aspect of improving the well-being and health outcomes of those communities. While I discuss important ways to establish community trust, the foundation of building trust is valuing the human experience and creating opportunities for open and meaningful communication. This can be achieved through simple practices such as talking to each other, actively listening for understanding, and sharing experiences over a cup of tea.