Our Stakeholder Engagement Approach
Minnesota is home to some of the widest health disparities in the United States. Black, Indigenous and people of color experience discrimination or increased barriers when accessing healthcare.
As Hennepin Healthcare takes steps to reimagine the future of healthcare, we focused on the wisdom of people who are often affected and excluded the most from systems designed to serve them. On this page, you can read more about our different stakeholder groups, as well as our rationale for engaging them.
Key Stakeholder Groups
Hennepin Healthcare Patients
The people who receive care at Hennepin Healthcare are the most important stakeholder group in this work.
We recognize that some of Hennepin Healthcare’s patients may experience more health disparities, increased barriers when accessing healthcare or require very specific care.
Hennepin County Residents
Hennepin County residents, especially those living in areas near Hennepin Healthcare facilities are important stakeholders. Hennepin Healthcare’s hospital is located in the Elliot Park Neighborhood of Minneapolis and is one of the area’s largest institutions. Residents of Elliot Park are a key stakeholder subset of the county’s residents.
Hennepin Healthcare Team
Hennepin Healthcare team members are an important stakeholder group in this effort. Particularly those who are the first point of contact for patients and their loved ones including team members in hourly roles, frontline caregivers and those who work closely with patients that have complex needs.
Community, Healthcare and Business Leaders
These stakeholders are part of the statewide system of health improvement. They help identify pain points in our communities, as well as set goals for reducing negative health outcomes and eliminating health inequities. This group includes community health clinics, private and academic hospital systems, insurance payers, the medical and life sciences sector, healthcare startups, as well as the broader business community whose decisions impact current and potential patients.
Local and State Government
Local and state governments, as well as elected officials who serve in them are important stakeholders for healthcare systems' transformation. Relevant subsets of this group include city-, county- and state-level health and human services leadership, municipal elected leadership, county commissioners and elected members of the state legislature.
Engagement Focus
With a county consisting of more than 1.2 million residents, our stakeholder engagement effort will not be able to reach everyone.
This map of our engagement focus depicts areas where our engagement activities range from heavy to light. Actual engagement activities vary by region and stakeholder group.
Helping community members stay safe is our priority. All in-person activities are subject to change.
Engagement Focus Rationale
The areas of engagement focused above are not arbitrarily determined. They coincide with high health inequity and racially concentrated disinvestment caused by compounded health disparities from historic policies. You can read more about this history in the Our Community section of this site.
The dual-map on the right overlays regional desirability from the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (part of President Roosevelt’s New Deal in 1933). As you move the slider, you will see that the goal of driving non-white community members to the least desirable areas of Minneapolis was effectively achieved. Unfortunately, this forms the basis of much of the disparities in health outcomes we see today. Our engagement efforts prioritize high disparity areas, and also engage the broader county and, where relevant, the state.
Common Questions
Hennepin Healthcare launched community engagement and future planning to create a more just and equitable healthcare experience in Hennepin County.
The community served by our healthcare system has been directly engaged to share thoughts, ideas and wishes for how they would like to receive healthcare. Collectively, we are now creating a vision for the future of Hennepin Healthcare that improves community benefit, access, outcomes and value.
This effort is centered around listening, learning, collaborating and creating new systems that integrate future organizational plans with the desires and goals of the diverse and vibrant community we are honored to serve. Learn more about our stakeholder engagement approach.
Currently, we are turning the microphone to allteam members to gather more of their creative insights. Learn more about focused team member engagement.
The Learning Together phase came to a close at the end of December. We are moving seamlessly into the Planning Together phase.
During this phase, we are selecting the approaches to future planning considered during Phase Two: Creating Together that have the greatest potential for achieving the needs and wishes shared by our community. We are creating a bold plan to deliver a more just and equitable healthcare system, closely evaluating analyzing what we what the community has shared with us during the Learning Together phase and evaluating the broader healthcare landscape and social influencers of health in Hennepin County.
Since Phase One, we learned with and from over 1,130 community and team members in English, Somali, Spanish, Lao and Hmong through five different methods. We engaged these communities using both virtual and in-person methods including: key-informant (individual) interviews, small group discussions, community pop-ups, surveys and a community forum.
We are grateful to all who shared their time, energy, experiences and insights with us. We want to specifically thank our team members for your support of this project while simultaneously caring for our patients with great dedication.
We hosted two workshops with our Expert and Artist Design Team, one in person and the other virtual. During these workshops, our open discussions focused on creative solutions to achieve the vision that our community shared with us, dismantle injustices and create more equitable systems to improve healthcare.
In addition, we distributed pre-stamped postcards asking our community to share their artistic vision of what an inclusive and equitable downtown healthcare campus might look like. We collected 187 postcards from community members, patients, family members, loved ones and team members. The creative input from all postcards was carefully reviewed and can be found in the postcard project report.
Download the Learning Together | Engagement Insights Report Overview to read what we learned.
In late January through March, we will be creating opportunities for more team members to engage in the planning process. This will help us ensure our improvements are aimed at building a culture and employer environment based on team member input.
We will also continue to meet with our Expert and Artist Design Team. This group of health equity experts, healthcare professionals, community leaders and artists is working with physicians, leaders and other team members to envision how the insights gathered so far might be put into action.
The completed workshops to-date were energizing, dynamic experiences that fueled future-oriented ideas, creativity and problem-solving. Most importantly, the discussion sparked powerful ideas about how to achieve the vision that you and our community shared with us. The input gathered in 2021 provided a solid foundation to continue to explore potential strategies for how to achieve a more equitable and responsive healthcare system.
This planning process is just the first step in the transformation of Hennepin Healthcare. The next steps will take place over 2022-24 and involve the Board of Directors of Hennepin Healthcare, the county commissioners and the Hennepin Healthcare team in the development of a detailed implementation plan. Only after this implementation plan is completed will the multi-year rebuilding of the campus take place.
Please see our current updates page, Voices of Hennepin Healthcare blog series and sign up for our monthly newsletter from Jennifer DeCubellis, CEO of Hennepin Healthcare.
