What Is Collective Impact?

Collective Impact
A child’s health and well-being is much more than the absence of illness. So many issues affect a child’s health: financial security, health literacy, education, housing, crime, stress and toxic environmental factors, such as air quality. That’s why we take a “collective impact” approach to achieve our goals. This means we involve members across sectors and have a clearly defined goal, and our activities are aligned and coordinated so that we make progress at scale.
The Alliance’s broad community-engagement strategy allows us to push for change not only in healthcare settings but also in the community as a whole. This includes the availability of safe housing, social networks and support systems, nutritious food, quality clinical care, cultural influences and physical environments of our homes, schools and neighborhoods. Investing in these upstream sources of health will improve the health and well-being of our children in a sustainable way.Conditions for collective impact:

  • A common agenda (PDF) (This is the common agenda for the Dallas asthma initiative)
  • Shared measurement
  • Mutually reinforcing activities among participants
  • Continuous communication
  • A “backbone organization,” which coordinates the activities of members

The Alliance’s backbone team assists the Alliance by orchestrating work in a structured way to achieve and sustain social change.

Learn more about collective impact initiatives: