CHCM Presents at 2026 NNPHI Annual Conference 

In April, the Community Health Commission of Missouri (CHCM) leadership joined public health leaders from across the country in New Orleans for the 2026 National Network of Public Health Institutes Annual Conference. Riisa Rawlins (Chief Executive Officer), Velva Hollimon (Senior Director of Operations), and Aja Owens (Senior Implementation Manager) represented CHCM and presented about participatory budgeting (PB) as a tool for transforming health systems. 

Together, they led a session titled “Power in Partnership: Participatory Budgeting as a Model for Health Systems Transformation.” The session focused on PB as a way to shift public health decision-making from decisions made about communities to decisions made with communities. CHCM leaders connected this framework to PB efforts already happening within the organization, including the Seniors Community Fund, where older adults help shape community investments, and the Youth Advisory Council, where young people lead funding decisions around mental health, healing, stigma, access, and trust.  

Through an interactive simulation, participants were asked to act as a community-informed decision-making body with a $100,000 budget. They reviewed mock proposals focused on issues such as mobile health access, youth mental health, transportation, community healing, and data accountability. The exercise asked participants to weigh immediate needs against long-term systems change, while centering community voice, lived experience, and equity-centered, trauma-informed principles. 

The session reflected CHCM’s broader belief that community engagement should go beyond listening. When communities are given real decision-making power, public health systems become more accountable, responsive, and rooted in the people they serve. As CHCM shared in the session, “Nothing about us without us becomes decided by us.” and rooted in the people they serve. As CHCM shared in the session, “Nothing about us without us becomes decided by us.”