Austin Health Commons

Words by Jess Hagemann Photos by Nick Berard Portraits by Eric Morales

Where Health Happens

Reclaiming the “Healthy Community”

Since 2016, the medical and professional teams at Austin Health Commons, a local nonprofit, have been committed to “creating health where health happens.” For founder Dr. Amina Haji, that looks like “our homes, our schools, our workplaces, and our neighborhoods. Health is what we cook and eat. It’s our daily routines.” As such, part of AHC’s holistic approach also involves racial healing—and new as of 2020, a COVID-19 direct relief program.

According to Dr. Haji, “Only about 11% of health outcomes are determined by clinical care.” The remaining 89% are influenced by factors like lifestyle and built environment. When those environments are ethnically and/or socioeconomically homogeneous, she believes that community members grow up isolated from and divided against one another. Disparities emerge, for example, in the expected lifespan of White and Black Americans. “There’s a ten-year lifespan difference between a white female and an African American man,” Dr. Haji says—“the result of systems in place since this nation’s founding.” To heal from what she calls a “root cause perspective” then requires facing these divisions head-on.

Enter Austin Health Common’s (AHC) racial healing circles. Initially offered in partnership with the YMCAs of Hays, Williamson, and Travis counties, but now available online in a virtual format, healing circles are open to anyone. Each circle brings together an intentionally diverse group of 10-15 attendees—“so that you are in spaces with people who look different than you,” says Dr. Haji—and is led by a trained facilitator. Through storytelling and a series of exercises, participants “come to find [their] shared humanity.”

Sharon Ellerby, one of AHC’s 14 Racial Healing Practitioners, compares each healing circle to a “welcoming, supportive, and reassuring” space that grants attendees the freedom to participate or “just listen.” Whether or not attendees share their own story, they are exposed to the stories of others, and it’s “through those stories, we get a better understanding of each other,” Ellerby asserts. “The only negative feedback we’ve received thus far,” adds Yolanda Moten, AHC’s Director of Programs and Operations, “is that [the sessions] aren’t long enough!”

After COVID-19 began impacting Austin’s economy, AHC saw an opportunity to expand their programming. “One of our facilitators asked, ‘How can you be doing just racial healing when there are people who can’t pay their bills?’” Dr. Haji says. And thus, Program Director Moten was consequently tasked with developing a relief program that could “match those with capacity [that is, financial capacity or surplus resources],” she says, “to those with needs.” The five primary needs that the program meets are cash assistance, food donations, supplies like masks and hand sanitizer, logistical help (think running errands for the elderly), and emotional check-ins.
Historically, AHC has served Austin’s “Eastern crescent,” a region lately defined by gentrification and the ongoing displacement of its minority residents. As people with more resources move in, Moten says, “There are a lot of people who want to give and don’t know how.” Through AHC’s COVID-19 relief program, she hopes to “connect the community together, where they can better help each other.”

The Karisha Center

In addition to racial healing and COVID-19 relief, as early as Fall 2021 Austin Health Commons will debut The Karisha Center. Featuring guest-guided group healthcare visits, The Karisha Center will keep costs low and “really draw on the wisdom in the community” by offering appointments that combine visits from a physician, a nutritionist, a cooking instructor, and more in the quest to reclaim the healthy community paradigm.

Contact:
Amina Haji, AHC Founder
(512) 348-6455
austinhealthcommons.org
@austinhealthcommons