The Anchor Collaborative Cohort will include diverse health care and community teams that are collaborating to address interconnected challenges of health inequity, food insecurity, ever-climbing rates of diet-related chronic disease, and the impacts of climate change. These are “wicked problems” that we must co-solve for as we tackle the COVID-19 pandemic.

Over the course of the next four years Nourish will convene two 2-year cohorts of place-based collaborative teams from across Canada. These local collaboratives will unlock the power of food in their communities to address the upstream social and ecological determinants of health. Together, teams will co-design solutions to the wicked problems that they define in their communities. By leveraging existing health care and community assets, along with support provided by Nourish, the place-based collaboratives will experiment with new ways of improving well-being, addressing climate change, and advancing reconciliation and health equity. Nourish’s six Food for Health Levers provide a point of departure for teams to explore. 

How Do We Define Anchor Collaboratives? 

Anchor collaboratives are place-based teams made up of a health care institution taking a whole-of-hospital or health authority approach to working with their communities to experiment with opportunities around food as an upstream determinant of health. We use the term anchor to signal the desire to harness the long-term presence, mission, and resources of health care institutions to anchor well-being in their communities. Anchor collaboratives boldly activate existing assets to find innovative solutions, and forge new pathways for the health care sector to transition towards more preventative, equitable and sustainable futures.

Cohort Objectives

• Activate anchor leadership from public organizations in the health sector, leveraging economic, ecological, social, technological, and scientific resources in health and community organizations to build patient and planetary health.

• Nurture and grow systems leadership to address the upstream social and ecological determinants of health by developing the capacity of teams for awareness-based leadership, systems thinking, and new forms of collaboration for innovation.  

• Identify innovations and develop transition practices and pathways for health care and community collaborations that bring about healthier, more equitable and sustainable futures informed by Indigenous and Western systems change frameworks.

• Catalyze resources for place-based investment and scaling by harnessing local and regional partnerships to sustain collaboration..

Cohort Preview

The two years of Anchor Collaborative programming will be delivered through a cohort model. Anchor Collaborative teams will learn and exchange with peers nationally. Programming will be learner-centred, following the needs and interests of teams. It starts from the wicked problems that teams identify in the recruitment and capacity-building phase and with the help of the Food for Health Levers. Coaches, mentors, and experts will be matched to teams based on their problem areas and goals. 

Teams will come together, work asynchronously, and also connect with their cohort peers on a select number of interactive digital platforms. Virtual retreats and cohort meetings will scaffold the programming, and be complemented by learning groups that bring similar ‘cross-cohort’ groups together (for example, separate national learning circles for executives, clinicians, food service, and impact and communications leaders). When COVID-19 allows it, in-person retreats will be added to the programming. The costs of all Nourish-offered programming, including in-person retreats, are included for the selected cohort.

Each team’s Anchor Collaborative Coordinator should expect to spend 2.5 days per week supporting their multi-stakeholder team, with other members negotiating their commitments within the collaborative. Each team member should anticipate a minimum additional five hours per month to participate in virtual cohort meetings and learning groups convened by Nourish. The exception is for CEOs and Executive Directors, who will be convened quarterly. All team members are encouraged to seek a clear mandate from their senior leaders to align their work on Nourish with their job description and tasks.

Building Capacity for Systems Change

Recruitment for the Anchor Collaborative Cohort launches in November 2020 with a 6-month capacity-building period until late spring 2021. During this time, individuals and teams will be invited to join optional webinars and collaborative learning opportunities informed by Awareness-Based Systems Leadership, Transition Design, and Traditional Foodways. 

The Nourish team will also offer facilitated support during the recruitment period to help prospective participants prepare for the program. Teams will have a chance to build knowledge and skills for leading health system change, regardless of whether they decide to proceed with submitting an application. Once the collaboratives have been selected they will learn and exchange as a cohort over the two years that follow, experimenting with new interventions that move us toward a collective transition to a more equitable, sustainable future.

What Will Anchor Collaboratives Do? 

Anchor collaboratives will collectively explore how to activate existing assets and experiment with innovative opportunities to improve the health of their patients, staff, and community in bold ways, They will be supported by the Nourish team of staff, advisors and partners in their journey to: 

• Build multidisciplinary, place-based teams

• Identify and engage with stakeholders working on food, climate, equity, and/or community health and well-being

• Frame the wicked problem(s) they want to collectively address

• Map the problem space and historical context from which problem(s) emerged, moving toward solution-finding that takes into account complex systems dynamics

• Explore future scenarios, backcasting from desired future states 

• Generate and experiment with interventions

• Recruit investors and funding;

• Communicate their impact