2023 Community Partnership Awards
For nearly 20 years, the Community Partnership Awards have honored partnerships between Stanford and our region that work to tackle real-world problems and advance the public good.
OCE is pleased to recognize the three partnerships below:
Climate Resilient Communities: Our Communities, Our Bay and Partnerships for Climate Justice in the Bay Area
Climate change is affecting Bay Area communities via wildfires and smoke and increasingly intense heat waves, flooding, and sea level rise. To focus on the effects and possible solutions in “frontline” communities such as East Palo Alto, North Fair Oaks, and the Belle Haven neighborhood of Menlo Park, Climate Resilient Communities (CRC) works with two Stanford entities – Our Communities Our Bay (OCOB) and Partnerships for Climate Justice in the Bay Area (PCJ in the Bay), a Haas Center initiative. These collaborations leverage community-engaged research to specifically understand the challenges and needs of stressed communities, and deepen Stanford’s connections with local groups in common cause. OCOB has teamed up with community members on the front lines of climate change to conduct local outreach for studies ranging from measuring air quality in homes to identifying potential health impacts of climate hazards seen in sleep patterns. At the same time residents are provided with the tools they need to protect their health. PCJ in the Bay involves students and faculty in sustained, in-depth collaborations to help build climate resilience and energy justice at the community level. Some students have become a key part of CRC's organizational capacity after graduation.
Next Door Solutions and Stanford: Community-First Partnership
Domestic violence is a major public health problem, affecting more than one in three women in the United States during their lives. For the past decade, Next Door Solutions to Domestic Violence has partnered with Stanford’s School of Medicine in many ways, raising awareness, establishing a network among organization members and building community ties that continue to see benefits. Putting community first is a key value and guiding principle that sustains the partnership and leverages community members’ experiences to inform and lead the direction of work. That foundation has led to collaborations involving community-engaged teaching, learning and research in both academic and community settings. The partnership’s response to the isolating effects COVID-19 in 2020 sparked new strategies, such as the “Reaching Intimate Partner Violence Survivors in COVID-19” project led by El Comité de Mujeres Fuertes, a core group with lived experience who trained other community health workers. The group helped guide the work of Stanford’s Department of Emergency Medicine and Digital Medic to create culturally accessible web videos to broaden its reach.
Stanford Redwood City Sequoia School Mental Health Collaborative
Youth mental health is a top priority in the communities adjacent to Stanford’s campus as well as throughout the Bay Area and the nation. The Stanford Redwood City Sequoia School Mental Health Collaborative, a partnership including Redwood City School District, Sequoia Union High School District, Stanford’s Center for Youth Mental Health and Wellbeing, and Stanford’s John W. Gardner Center for Youth and their Communities, formed in early 2020 to help understand and address the critical mental health needs of local students and their families. The partnership endeavors to improve school district capacity to support student and staff wellbeing, which in turn supports teaching and learning. Stanford faculty, staff, students, and fellows are afforded the unique opportunity to work at the intersection of research and practice in ways that respond to community needs, advance the field of knowledge and teaching for the next generation of scholars, and demonstrate the value of authentic university-community partnership.
To see our past honorees, go to Community Partnership Awardees 2004 - 2022
The 2024 nomination period will open in Fall 2023. Awardees are selected based on three criteria: That the partnership 1) meets a need in our region; 2) creatively connects campus and community, and 3) engages students, staff, and/or faculty in service. The awardees are recognized at a spring luncheon. For questions, please email communityrelations@stanford.edu.