“Critical investments in South Stockton and leadership of grassroots organizations have been essential to the city’s ability to support its diverse population, particularly underserved immigrant groups.”
—RAND Corporation
RWJF Culture of Health 5-Year Community Landscape Report: Stockton, California
Report Oct-01-2022 3-min read
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Report Publish Date: October 2022
This report summarizes Stockton, Calif.’s health, wellbeing, and equity journey from 2016 to 2021, as part of RWJF’s Sentinel Communities Surveillance project.
Primary Takeaways
“Stockton’s capacity to promote health, wellbeing, and equity is principally led by San Joaquin County Public Health Services, in collaboration with various healthcare systems, community coalitions, and active grassroots organizations,” the authors write. During the period studied, the community was focused on youth development, health and trauma, and crime reduction. Cross-sector collaborators were working to address intergenerational health and poverty and the rising cost of housing. They also aimed to expand health center capacity and increase the number of community health workers.
Stockton had also improved its use of data to advance better health and increased efforts to engage the community and respond to its needs.
Overview and Objectives
Begun in 2016, RWJF’s Sentinel Communities Surveillance project tracks how a Culture of Health is developing in 29 communities across the country. The authors wanted to describe key challenges, opportunities, and insights in Stockton.
Hypothesis or Approach
The authors gathered information from phone interviews with Sentinel Community leaders; online, published, and local materials and media about the communities; and data sources including the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, the CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, County Health Rankings, and state and local data collection systems. For this report, the authors conducted 33 hourlong, semi-structured interviews between summer 2017 and spring 2022. Interviewees came from several different types of organizations and sectors.
How This Influences Change
“Stockton’s journey to promote health, wellbeing, and equity is one that illustrates how a community needs to leverage grassroots capacity and build on innovations in cross-sector collaboration,” the authors say. “Other communities can learn from Stockton’s efforts to build broad-based community initiatives to support health, including the use of philanthropic and private sector funds, as well as the insight gained from piloting new models, such as universal basic income.”
Research: Go Deeper
Located in the San Joaquin Valley, Stockton is a diverse community with a significant number of new migrants, partially because of the city’s agricultural industry. Stockton has experienced economic upheaval and related social challenges over the past five years because of the city’s bankruptcy in 2012 and sharp political transitions. Stockton transitioned away from a progressive agenda—which saw the adoption of efforts such as a universal basic income pilot—to a more centrist or conservative agenda that is now forcing the community to face issues about the role of government, the interaction with community-based organizations, and racial and social equity. Further, Stockton continues to grapple with complex health issues, including the deep impacts of community trauma and the intersection of health with housing and public safety issues. Despite these challenges, Stockton has embraced many efforts to advance cross-sector collaboration in its efforts to improve health and wellbeing, linking youth and community development with health; engaging community organizations to augment healthcare capacity; and enhancing data capacity to better coordinate multisector information on upstream drivers of health. Bolstered by local healthcare systems, philanthropic investments, and an increasingly engaged private sector, Stockton is pursuing innovation in community renewal and is examining the impacts of those community investments on health.
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, October 2022
Research Team
This study and report was conducted and created by:
- RAND Corporation
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