Data and News

Meet Ervin – a Community Health Worker in eastern Washington!

2024 has been a year of change, of growth, and of learning for our team at BHT. The renewal of our 1115 Waiver has given us a new opportunity to look ahead in 2025, but we would be remiss if we didn’t take a chance to acknowledge all the hard work and impact that went into 2024. This year we celebrated new beginnings for a few programs, and the sunsetting and bittersweet goodbyes for others. We continue to center community voice in all we do, and even had some fun along the way growing our team.

Community Health Worker Awareness Week is held every year from August 26th to 30th. We’re excited to keep highlighting eastern Washington community health workers all year long! Discover more about these incredible individuals who are making a real difference through their dedication, compassion, and relentless commitment to enhancing community health.

At BHT, we share a commitment to Indigenous communities as we address the unique health challenges they face, which are deeply rooted in historical inequities and ongoing systemic barriers. We support Native-led and Native-serving organizations through both funding opportunities and our Tribal Partners Collaborative, which seeks to bring together community leaders to address Native health.

This week we had our final meeting of the Spokane Collaborative, as the program’s funding has been discontinued in 2025. Though there is some sadness in change and endings, we took some time this week to celebrate the milestones and success with both past and present collaborative members.

In 2023, the BHT board allocated funds for community events to elevate our community support and live out our mission and values. BHT is committed to sponsoring events and community engagement activities that promote community wellness and elevate community voices.

Over the past week, we have taken some time as a Board and staff to pause, share our emotions, and reconnect with one another. We start this week with a steadfast commitment to do all we can to ensure that every person in our community has access to the resources they need to be healthy and safe.

At the heart of many community-based initiatives lies the need for reliable funding, and securing those resources often requires a strong grant-writing strategy. Recognizing this critical need, we launched an initiative designed to directly support organizations in their pursuit of additional funding. As part of our ongoing commitment to building capacity within the community, we allocated up to $220,000 for Grant-Writing Stipends in 2024. These stipends were available to organizations seeking technical assistance in grant writing, empowering them to work with a grant-writing consultant of their choice.

To demonstrate BHT’s accountability to the community, we are adopting a Community Feedback process. We hope that this process will generate space for community members to formally express concerns about our practices and processes as we aspire for greater diversity and inclusion of voices.