Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to Unsung Stewards, a podcast series presented by the Ripple Foundation. I'm Becky Payne, President and CEO of Ripple, which is dedicated to fostering equitable health and well being.
Our podcast spotlights and celebrates individual stewards, people working with others to create the conditions that everyone needs to thrive.
At Ripple, we are dedicated to a future where everyone thrives with no exceptions.
Ripple and our partners have committed ourselves to building that future, which starts with building the will, among others, to join a growing movement to thrive. Together this season on Unsung Stewards, we are talking to stewards within that movement. They are all advancing equity and thriving in their communities and bringing others into this work. For this episode, I'm delighted to share my conversation with Samantha Shock, Executive Director of the Leonard Parker Poole Institute for Help.
Based in Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley, the Poole Institute works to improve the overall health of the community through projects that uplift the vital conditions for health and well being.
Sam and I discuss her work to support her community through strong partnerships, systems level thinking, and above all, relentless flexibility.
As you listen, you'll hear many examples of how Sam leans into shared stewardship as a practice that allows her to support her community to thrive.
Well, Sam, I first want to say I've really been looking forward to this conversation. We've been working with you all for so long and I feel like I have followed your journey for a few years now and I'm thrilled to have the chance to speak with you. So thank you for making time.
[00:01:40] Speaker B: Absolutely. You guys have influenced our process and our work so much. So this is a great conversation to be having.
[00:01:47] Speaker A: As you know, we are focused on the people, the stewards, who are making the work happen with this partnership podcast. So I love to start with inviting you to share your story and bring us along on the journey of who you are and how you came to be doing this work. The things that shaped you into the leader that you are today.
[00:02:08] Speaker B: Sure. So I am the oldest of three girls and the first in my family to go to college, so I always start there in terms of where I came from. I grew up on Long island in New York and and always had an interest in working with kids. I was just always interested in creating supportive learning environments for youth and knowing the importance of that. And as I went on to college and then to my graduate degree, became really interested in understanding how environments impact people over time and found a home for that really in human development and family studies. Understanding people in context, I always say, so what are the things that make us who we are as individual people. And then all the experiences we have over a lifetime make it that no two people are the same. And so how do we understand the intersection of those things and how that plays out in communities? And in that time had shifted from child welfare and foster care, types of programming, supportive housing programming to healthcare. And soon saw that it's the same set of things that you're looking at, whether you're in the healthcare sector or more in the human services side of things. The things that impact people are whether or not you have access to housing, whether or not you have education opportunities, whether or not you have a support system around you, what your family dynamics are, the environment and community you grew up in. And so in health care, it was called Social Determinants of Health. And so that's how I kind of came into that space and really got to evaluate a lot of community health initiatives in my early days at lvhn, which I loved. And then I had an opportunity to be part of a training program that showed me what systems change was and that all of our programs that we support and implement are really just workarounds for things, that our systems are often not providing for people. And that in doing so, we're kind of just kicking the can down the road a little bit. And so if we look at things like poverty and poverty levels over time, we haven't made a real dent in that. Right. And why is that? Not because of lack of trying, but on a larger scale, which we haven't had the chance to really do differently. And was like, oh, this is how my brain works. And I just didn't have the language for it. And became really interested in systems level change and thinking about sort of the puzzle that makes up a community and all the moving pieces. And how does that impact a person who's trying to access a whole lot of services?
And did we miss a lot of moments along the way to prevent that person from needing a given service? And what can we do as large systems which are only getting larger and larger to better provide services and break down those barriers that people have to accessing things.
[00:04:47] Speaker A: Thank you. And I want to just lift up for our listeners that a lot of the things you're describing, this dissatisfaction with the status quo and as you said, the way your brain works, connecting those dots and understanding systems and getting out of that transactional programmatic approach and into really longer arc upstream solutions are such a perfect example of stewardship practices in the field, in the wild, if you will. So that brings me to this idea of Place and the work that you all do in Lehigh Valley being so extremely place based. And I know that that community is really important to you both in your personal and professional life. So what is it you love about your community that you want us to know? Oh, so much.
[00:05:32] Speaker B: I grew up in a very sort of urban suburban area. And so as I moved into my adult years, looked for that same thing. And so I made my way to Pennsylvania and the Lehigh Val, I think provides the best of a lot of worlds. We are about an hour and a half outside of Philadelphia. We're about two hours from New York. So close access to larger urban areas. But we are an urban area in and of ourselves with the city of Allentown and we have two other smaller cities, Bethlehem and Easton. So you do get to have that experience of we live in a suburban residential neighborhood that's right outside of the urban area and close to a lot of outdoor activities as well. So you get a little bit of everything. There's a lot of diversity in the Lehigh Valley. We have a growing Hispanic population. There's a lot of young families. We're growing with a number of younger people who are maybe moving back here after college. And so that is really increasing as well. And now I'm raising my family here. Good school systems, access to all the things that we need. Much of my family has moved here as well. So we really made it home.
[00:06:36] Speaker A: You mentioned that there was a point at which you made a transition in focusing on social determinants of health to focusing on vital conditions. So the Leonard Parker Pool Institute made that shift in the not too distant past and that was an evolution. I wonder if you could, since you just described a lot of those conditions. In thinking about the community and who has benefited from that and who may still find it sometimes challenging making the choice to do that shift. What was that like? And what does focusing on vital conditions look like in Lehigh Valley?
[00:07:17] Speaker B: Yeah. So a little bit about the history of the Leonard Parker Pool Institute for Health. We are a subsidiary of the healthcare system, so we are underneath a healthcare umbrella, but we are our own nonprofit within that.
We were built out of remaining funds from a philanthropic fund that was attached to LVHN. So the pool trust had been operation for nearly 50 years and had always been committed to improving the health of the community outside of hospital walls. So long standing recognition that there are things in life that impact our health over time that are not healthcare. And I think time has really shown us right. Our costs of healthcare are only going up, but it does not mean that we are necessarily seeing better health outcomes over time for our population. So the Pool Trust was set to go out of business in 2025. And so what was the opportunity to continue the legacy of what had been started?
Poole Trust in a new form. And so they created the Leonard Parker Pool Institute for Health to be a durable entity that could continue to work on improving health over time, not to provide additional healthcare, but within that healthcare setting to really think about those proactive, longer term, upstream things that we know are impacting health. And at the time we called it social determinants of health. And wiser people than me who set up the institute to begin with, knew that, you know, that's just a term that we're using now. At some point there will be a different term. So how do we just talk about health overall and improving health and leaving it very broad.
And as we started to do this work, we knew we wanted to take a place based approach and started to think about neighborhood as a unit of change that we could really wrap our arms around and think about how all those things intersect in a place. And I think as we started to realize that the social determinants of health language can mean both services that were meeting urgent needs of people today. So someone who is about to be homeless, someone who needs food today or tomorrow, as well as those longer term upstream types of approaches that we were really talking about. And so we found the language in the well being portfolio and vital conditions really helpful in articulating the full picture of things that we were talking about. We always say the community is our patient, right? So if you look at a community, what are the things that are there? So the city of allentown is about 125,000 people.
It has had an investment over the last 10 years. It's been a wonderful revitalization of the city of Allentown and the Poole Trust. And now the Leonard Parker Pool Institute for Health started to ask, well, what about all the residents who are living around that redeveloped area? How do we ensure that the families who have been living in Allentown for many years don't just get pushed out, but really we can think about how are we bringing additional assets to those communities as well to give them more opportunity over time?
And so the vital conditions framework really made sense for us in lots of different ways. Thinking about what are those assets in those neighborhoods, how do we think about these things in the long term, but also connecting it and bridging it to those urgent services that both are equally needed and that we have to think about the balance of those two and how they're showing up in our communities.
[00:10:21] Speaker A: We often talk about that as the adequacy of urgent services. How do you have enough that you're addressing and attending to what is causing the struggling and suffering?
And don't confuse that that is going to be sufficient to pull them into thriving or opportunity for thriving. The way you just described that is a really helpful framework for people to think about.
[00:10:44] Speaker B: One of the first things when we started to explore this, this model was that we'll never have enough urgent services to create thriving. And that for me, just made so much sense around.
We often are referring people to services that have a long wait list already that can't provide all that they need to provide. And if that is our only solution, then we're not really able to meet the needs of people. And this idea of what does it mean to thrive, what does it look like to thrive? And then how do we also ensure that we're creating pathways directly to that, not just through those urgent services. And in that, freeing up those urgent services to be there when people need them the most. And I think that's really an important sort of balance you can find in the framework.
[00:11:28] Speaker A: Speaking of your work with us, and I mentioned how much we see you, we see you as a steward and you understand our working definition of shared stewardship. And it's. I think I heard a lot of it echoed in your starting story of who you are and how you have gone through the world, this recognition that you are putting other people's needs ahead of just your own, that the greater good is very important.
So I know you're very familiar with those practices and that notion of shared stewardship. So I am curious if you think of yourself as a steward, and if so, how do you see yourself practicing as a steward?
[00:12:11] Speaker B: Don't know that. If you would have asked me that a couple years ago, I would have said yes. But in my learning from our colleagues at the Ripple foundation, everyone's a steward. And so, yes, I am a steward, as is everyone. And we can all play a role in making our communities better. I think for me, the practices that I find easier are the things that come naturally to me. So I think I tend to see dot connecting. I tend to see those opportunities of where are things aligned or how are things adding on to one another? How do we bring together lots of different efforts to have a larger impact? I do a lot of that. I'm very relational, really highly value my relationships with my partners and understanding what they need in order to achieve success in their world. What do we need and where's the middle ground in that? The things that are harder is, you know, we're working in an ecosystem that's constantly changing and we don't always have control over most of what we're doing, actually very little of what we're doing.
So patience, right, constantly coming back to what the opportunity is, making sure we're holding that above all other things. Collaboration is hard. It's not, you know, it's not an easy thing to do. We have to work with others across the whole groups and places in order to really do any of this work. So that part will, I think, always be a challenge for us.
[00:13:29] Speaker A: And yet a testament to how you were established as an organization and continue to move beyond the health system's walls to see. And though it's not our responsibility, we are going to take it as our duty to talk to and coordinate and strategize and build trusting relationships with all of the other pieces that impact the life of that one person in front of us. And that is quintessentially the idea of stewardship. So our listeners have been exposed to what we increasingly refer to as a movement to thrive together, reflected in people like you working with others to make their communities better and make progress toward collective well being.
And as you've already lifted up, it does require system transformation that the current system that's definitely not serving all people to thrive or give them the opportunity to. So I want to have you reflect a little bit on where you see yourself and also your region in that movement.
[00:14:26] Speaker B: You had asked me earlier, what do I love about the Lehigh Valley. And I think there is a smallness and a bigness about the Lehigh Valley that I really do love. It is big enough that we can make an impact. We have enough of a reach in bigger cities. You've got a lot of a lot of hands in the pot on anything that you're working on. And it is a little bit easier to think about how we implement some of these collective things in an area like the Lehigh Valley. I mean, the fact that the Leonard Parker Pool Institute for Health even exists is I think really speaks to the leadership that we had both on the Pool Trust and within Lehigh Valley Health Network now, Jefferson Health, and this commitment to health overall and healthcare's role within that and creating space to use some resources to really think more upstream.
That's a huge asset that we have working in our favor. And our role is to really leverage that as much as possible to get the Most out of that as our commitment to the Lehigh Valley continues. And so I think I've just come to really embrace the livingness of it all and how it just evolves in ways that sometimes we can't even anticipate. But if we can stay curious and stay open, I think that it enables everyone to join us in that movement whenever along the way that they can, and in whatever capacity they can too. So while it might be small today, it might get bigger over time, or vice versa, because our lives are constantly changing.
[00:15:51] Speaker A: Yeah. You're not sitting with certainty or answers about where this is going or what it will accomplish.
And as you think about either answering to partners who've already joined you, or encouraging others to come into what you're trying to accomplish there, how do you wrestle with that? Yeah.
[00:16:12] Speaker B: So when we started that place based Neighborhood Focus, we selected one neighborhood within Allentown to start to look at, not knowing if the residents there would even want to partner with us or if there was enough of that partnership and trust to start. But there was. And we've now built over the last three years, I think some early signs of us headed in the right direction. And in that time, I think we have found we always say it, trust goes a long way. Right. But it's not built overnight and it ebbs and flows. And so what working at a neighborhood level has helped us do is to center the residents in that is what we're doing the best thing for the residents of this neighborhood. And just coming back to that, what can we do within our control right now to take another step? And what relationships should we be cultivating? Always sort of continuing to invest in the ones we have, but growing more and more. And in that, I think also being extremely respectful of the work that everyone is doing. Everyone is trying to their best in their own way to do work that has an impact and that is benefiting the community. It's not always the case that, that, you know, it does have the impact that we want, but everyone's trying and we need everyone. And, you know, everyone has a different piece of the puzzle. So if you're in the housing sector, you can contribute in different ways around housing and many other things. Right. Education folks, what are they doing to think about how they're supporting everyone?
We can't do it all at once. And so that kind of creates the space for people to come and join. One of the really important things for us is to look at best practices in groups across the country and to learn from that and figure out how we Bring that to the local context.
So while we have not committed to just one model, we have certainly learned from many. Some of the ones that are top of mind for me are stripe together and they're cradle to college or career continuum. And thinking about all of the pieces of civic infrastructure that are needed for people to be successful over time. As well as groups like FCS Ministries in Atlanta, we've explored models like ict, which is integrated community therapy with a group called Visible Hands Collaborative.
And so really just trying to take pieces from some of the best groups that are leading this work across the country.
Enterprise Community Partners being another in the housing space. Right. Who's doing this really well from their perspective. And how do we think about importing those best practices into the Lehigh Valley to infuse that into the work that's happening there? So I think what we've seen is that the power of relationships and centering around something that's bigger than any one organization has really thus far been helpful to us getting our movement off the ground. And I think will continue to be our guiding principle.
[00:19:03] Speaker A: I want to shift a little bit and talk more about kind of current moment. We've always had inequities. We know it's the systems that are performing exactly as designed and they are creating and entrenching us in this state of inequity. And yet there's been no shortage of change upon change upon change. Some of it, if we were to step back, we might say, well, none of us really liked that piece of the system anyway. And yet it's been at a scale and a speed that I think is very disorienting. And everyone is trying to make sense of what does it mean? How do you discern the right things to respond to, to take action on? So as you think about this moment and the courage it takes to stand in holding the long arc of what you're trying to accomplish, how are you wrestling with that as you lead this organization?
[00:20:01] Speaker B: It means our work is more important than ever. At the end of the day, whatever challenges are happening at a larger scale.
We all live in the same neighborhood, right? In the same community, and we have to sort of work together within that. And while many things are feeling painful in this moment, how do we continue to say, okay, so as a result of that, what new opportunities are in front of us to maybe think differently, do differently, try something different, or support it in a different way than we have in the past? That recognition that we are still investing in our future in whatever way that looks, you know, Right now is the important piece.
[00:20:39] Speaker A: Yeah. You lifted up several of your colleagues and partners in other sectors, government, health systems, education.
And I'm just curious, kind of how you all are taking care of each other in this moment. What has the investment you've made in your partnership and coalition prior to this moment afforded you as you navigate this.
[00:21:00] Speaker B: Together, made it possible to navigate it at all. Right. And to know that we're in it together. That need hasn't changed. Our purpose for doing any of this has not changed. And so even though our context is changing, I think because we have each other in the relationship that we have developed, it's enabling us to keep going despite the challenges. I think in these times, it can be easy to just say, like, you know, I'm done. I'm good to walk away, or, you know, do something different. But I think the relationships and partnerships that we've really invested in over the last couple years and helped us to be able to withstand the current challenges and still know that, yeah, we just gotta. We gotta figure out a different way and continue to meet the needs. But it also means we all have to look at what we're doing and say is what the things that we are doing are they the most essential things.
[00:21:50] Speaker A: And being in that conversation together gives you the opportunity to say, ex partner needs to pivot for a time to attend to these things. But we know that the rest of us can hold the space of the longer arc. And I think that that's something that's been reflected back to us in communities that have been able to really lean into stewardship and using the vital conditions. When you deeply understand the role each other plays, it's easier to take that breath, not be as reactive and be coordinated in responding when needed, but also holding the commitments for that longer arc.
So you mentioned kind of, you know, there's no shortage of things that come up that make you kind of reassess. But then you have, in this conversation and what we've observed of you all over time really demonstrated and exemplified that you have this profound capacity to stay focused on opportunity and to frame what's happening at any given moment as opportunity, even if it's challenging and it's a puzzle you have to figure out. So I am curious if you have thoughts on how you manage to do that, the work that you do that enables you to find the way to hope. What is it that allows you to see challenge and struggle as opportunity?
[00:23:15] Speaker B: I think the reason that we do this work is not for our own sake. Right. We want to Be part of something. We want to make a difference. And I think in that, sometimes we can get in our own way of thinking that the thing that we're doing has to be done by us and not necessarily right, that sometimes it feels like you're trying to do something and it's not the right time, but in two years, it could be the right time for that and to never lose those ideas, that it's just finding the right moment for some of these things. And if that one's not happening today, maybe there's something over here that we do have the bandwidth to work on and to advance and move forward.
And so I think a piece for me has just been seeing the cycle of how some of this work happens. And in that I've been invested in by many people who I have benefited from in terms of equipping me with things like being part of the Poole Fellowship for Health, which I now have the pleasure of overseeing and learning from people who are systems leaders and giving me tools and language to really think about and hold all of that. But I think really just trying to always come back to, we only have so much time, so much capacity to do something. Where are we spending our energy and our time so we can advance something forward and always having things in our back pocket to change or to pivot or to bring something else forward if we need to.
[00:24:37] Speaker A: I recently heard someone describe it as, just because you're good at something and you are getting outcomes doesn't mean it's moving you towards your goal. And so are you optimizing lots of things that aren't adding up to the direction. And that's what I hear you giving voice to in that.
[00:24:52] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely.
[00:24:55] Speaker A: So I'm just curious, on a personal level, when you think about the future, what gives you hope?
[00:25:02] Speaker B: The commitment I see, you know, every day, I get to work with people who are so committed to the work that they're doing and to trying to create spaces and environments that are better for people, that better meet people's needs, that are welcoming and that, you know, are building that sense of belonging and civic muscle as we talk about. Right. And I hope to, you know, be part of the many people who are working to provide evidence around this model. I think oftentimes we think about it as more soft science, but I think there is impact in that and that it can both feel like it's the right thing and be the right thing all at the same time. So I'm most excited about carving this path as we go forward and seeing what where it takes us and how we can have some transformational impact over time, both here and in other communities across the country.
[00:25:55] Speaker A: I love that. I do have one more question, and that is if, as we invite more people into this movement, if you were sitting with someone who is kind of considering thinking about vital conditions or thinking about the benefits of bringing a broader coalition together to do something bigger than they themselves can do, I'm wondering if you have advice on, like, the one or two first steps they could take just to get started. If they're thinking about this work or thinking about where to begin, knowing what you know now, what would your advice be?
[00:26:29] Speaker B: So I think slowing down enough to get to know the people, the motivations that they have, the reasons that they're doing, the work they do, the things that their organization needs to accomplish, would be the first thing I would say. And then the other thing is just patience. And you know, you might be having a conversation today that might come back around in three years and you never know. So I think staying open and really being interested in people and who they are and what they do and asking about what their world looks like, even if it's not relevant to what you're doing today, just helps to open up your perspective a little bit and think about it from someone else's shoes, which can lead to all new ideas and ways of thinking about it.
[00:27:05] Speaker A: Thank you. Thank you so much. I've really enjoyed the conversation.
[00:27:09] Speaker B: Thank you for having me.
[00:27:10] Speaker A: Thank you for listening to this episode of Unsung Stewards. We hope you took inspiration that will help you grow in your own stewardship of a thriving future for all. I want to thank today's guest for joining us and for their work to improve the communities they serve.
I'd also like to thank the team that makes this podcast possible, Molly Belsky, Layla Hussain, Mark Navarro, and Amanda McIntosh. If you liked this episode and want to hear others, you can rate and review this podcast or follow us on your favorite podcast app so you never miss an episode.
I'm your host, Becky Payne, President and CEO of the Ripple Foundation.
To learn more about our guests and their work, please visit our website at www.ripple.org www.rippel.org.
we all hold deep gratitude for those who have been willing to share their stories with us.
