Multnomah County Health Department works with communities to advance health equity, protect our most vulnerable, and promote health and wellness for everyone.

We are a leader in addressing leading causes of death through a racial equity lens.

For the Healthy Homes and Communities team and Doug Fir Partners, equitable and thoughtful community engagement was essential to identifying interventions to increase adaptive capacity that align with what the community wants, needs, and will utilize. The Doug Fir Partners team developed six goals for the engagement process, with the overall engagement approach outlined in Figure XX. 

Doug Fir Partners’ Community Engagement Goals:

1. Direct, inclusive engagement with residents, community leaders, and local organizations, including sharing information about local heat hazards and impacts.  

2. Build trust and the foundations of lasting relationships between community partners, community members, and the Multnomah County HHC team.  

3. Evaluation of community interest in, and priorities regarding, extreme heat intervention ideas. 

4. Determine which interventions are most desired, culturally appropriate, and likely to be used and maintained by the community of the selected HRFA.

5. Identify synergies or complementary capabilities to work towards building collective capacity for long-term heat resilience implementation. 

6. Engagement efforts will be focused on feedback from technical experts, community organizations, and community members with lived experience, prioritizing depth of knowledge rather than trying to hear from as many people as possible.