Kicking Off the Year with the New MCH Housing Priority
By Kate Jankovsky, Childhood Adversity Prevention Manager
New year, new priority, new priority lead! My name is Kate Jankovsky (she/her), Childhood Adversity Prevention Manager. I lead the new MCH housing priority. I’m lucky to know many of you from my previous role managing the Colorado Child Fatality Prevention System for close to a decade. From that experience, I know that you are all creative and dedicated people who care deeply about your communities and this state, and it’s an honor to spend more time with you in this new capacity.
I’m currently filled with a lot of excitement and anxiety about the year ahead. I bet many of you are too. I’m excited to kick off the new year of MCH Digests, and it’s tempting to write to you about setting new intentions, committing to big resolutions, doing more, reaching beyond, etc. As we all know, the needs and sense of urgency have never felt greater to grind like we always do in public health. However, this year, I’m going to follow the lead of writer and advocate Suleika Jaouad, who writes about rejecting the notion of resolutions in Against resolutions on Substack. Jaouad’s writing on the journey that led her to reject resolutions in favor of rituals inspired me deeply. While I recommend reading, I want to share this passage with you as a ritual-based approach to the new year and to our new work on housing:
Rather than control, rituals are relational. They create atmosphere. They offer rhythm and containment. Where resolutions depend on willpower - a finite resource, especially in times of illness and uncertainty - rituals build scaffolding. They don’t ask us to muscle through. They anchor us in time, place, and meaning.
Jaouad invites readers to join the 30-day journaling project with these simple instructions: “The only instruction is to show up, to take the lapses in stride, to keep going.” As someone who has not journaled since my diary was covered in stickers and sealed with a small heart lock and key, I’ve recently stumbled back upon the power of journaling to process, clear my busy mind, and set priorities. Let me know if you want to participate in the 30-day journaling project with me. As I think Jaouad would appreciate, I will be starting it this week, late but ready and committed to the daily ritual of it all.
What does this have to do with our MCH housing work? I am bringing this same focus on rituals to the housing priority work. Instead of asking you to commit to the impossible and stretch yourself even more impractically thin, setting lofty (and admirable) goals to solve housing crises in your communities, I’m asking you to please consider being in a learning and growing space with me. To borrow Jaouad’s words, I want to “build scaffolding” for this work “anchor[ed] in time, place, and meaning.” I am also applying this approach to our state-level housing work. Because we knew that we could not take on the whole world of housing and that so much work is already being done, we are starting by building partnerships and learning about the housing work happening in our own house, so to speak. We are convening CDPHE colleagues across the spectrum of public health work: lead, radon, interpersonal violence, substance misuse, injury prevention, built environment, climate and health, maternal and child health, etc. to start with what feels both grounding and manageable.
I don’t have all the answers, but I commit to a ritual of humbly learning along with you about what the role of state and local public health in housing work is, should, and could be in Colorado; “to show up, to take the lapses in stride, to keep going.”
Join me? Please reach out if you want to talk or hear more about the work so far: kate.jankovsky@state.co.us. We know that the housing issues across the state are great, but with intention and ritual, our dedication to this work will be greater.
Kate
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