Sonoma Connect | Sonoma Unidos

Working together to create a comprehensive equity-focused and healing-centered network.

Pictured here is our backbone team. Left to right: Sofia Tecpoyotl, Mariana Raschke, Dana Swilley, Saskia Garcia.

Who We Are

Sonoma Connect | Sonoma Unidos (SC|SU) is a coalition of community leaders and multi-sector partners, working together to prevent and heal adverse childhood experiences and trauma caused by Structural Drivers of Health (SDOH).

What We Do

We lead the development of a local Community Information Exchange Model Network and advance a multi-pronged approach to increasing mental and physical health equity through supporting both direct services and systems changes. We convene community members, resource providers, and service providers to form systems-change-focused Action Teams to address fragmentation of resources and structural racism. 

What is a Community Information Exchange (CIE) Network?

A Community Information Exchange (CIE) is a community-led ecosystem comprised of multidisciplinary network partners using a shared language, a resource database, and integrated technology platforms to deliver enhanced community care planning.

By using a CIE model, we go from a reactive approach to a proactive, holistic, person-centered approach

At its core, CIE centers the community to support anti-racism and health equity.

Why We Do It

Sonoma County’s population of just under 500,000 reflects significant disparities in wealth and physical and mental health outcomes. A Portrait of Sonoma County: 2021 Update (the Portrait) revealed glaring racial inequities in life expectancy, education, and earnings most significantly for the Black community, Latinx community and other communities often excluded from critical decisions that impact their health and long-term well-being. Despite Sonoma County’s many resources, these are hard to find, hard to access, and not adequately connected or coordinated. Systems tend to function in silos, to not be person-centered, and to not center community members most negatively impacted by structural inequities. Those closest to the problems are closest to the solutions yet too often they are also furthest from resources and power.

Benefits of a CIE-model At Different Levels

Individual

Individuals benefit from a universal, person-centered record of life events, and system interactions enable providers to proactively tailor services to individual needs. This supports healing-informed care by reducing the need for individuals to repeatedly share their experience and situation to different service providers. The CIE allows for responsive and proactive system that reduces the burden on individuals and families who may be in crisis
Agency

Agencies can efficiently collaborate with providers across sectors using a shared language and shared outcomes to deliver comprehensive care while generating referrals through the system.
Community

Community receives insights into broader trends to more proactively address unmet needs and barriers, as well as disparities in access to services. Data also can be used to inform local planning and funding priorities and to advocate for policy change.

Join our call to action

Be human centered, transformative rather than transactional, anti-racist, upstream and trauma informed
Dismantle systems, policies, and processes that generate barriers or oppression and work to generate access to opportunity, wellbeing and self-efficacy for everyone
Be sustainable and culturally responsive to support people across the age spectrum experiencing adversity
Reduce disparities in social determinants of health and eliminate ACES as measurable indicators
Increase efficiency and alignment in fiscal structures with shared resources and braided funding
Collect disaggregated qualitative and quantitative data, guided by anti-racist and indigenous practices, use this to look at intersectionality and reduce disparities and inequity in access to and outcome of services.

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Our Core Partners

Sonoma CAN (Community Action Network) formerly “CAP Sonoma” - This partner is Sonoma Connect’s fiscal sponsor as well as the contract holder for the Resource Connect Network (RCN) and holds business contracts, data sharing agreements, onboarding and training partners on the RCN platform, facilitating data governance activities to ensure legal and privacy protections.

Aliados Health - A network of 17 community health center members with sites in Marin, Napa, Sonoma, Contra Costa, Solano, and Yolo counties. They support the Resource Connection Network design and awareness building with regional Health Center members.

United Way of the Wine Country (UWWC) - This partner maintains the integrated resource directory our Resource Connection Network. They are the 2-1-1 Sonoma administrator and 2-1-1 Emergency Response Lead.
Action Team Members and Community Leadership Board Members – These stakeholders ensure CIE development and community care planning is grounded in community voice and focused on increasing racial equity.