• Access to Health Care Momentum Team
  The City Heights Community is empowered through education and resources on a path to wellness and a comprehensive health home with accessible services delivered in an environment that reflects the culturally and linguistically diverse needs of the community.
  
  
• Food Justice Momentum Team
  Our vision is to gather a diverse community working together towards creating a sustainable and just food system for all.
  
  
• Improving Transportation in City Heights Momentum Team
  The team believes in free youth bus passes for students and youth, and in collaborating with organizations in the community that believe in a pilot program for students (middle school through community college).
  
  
• Peace Promotion Momentum Team
  Creating a safe community through engaged, informed residents, City Heights has affordable, accessible health care and high quality education for all residents. The entire community’s inclusive human rights practices, youth leadership and empowerment, plus restorative practices are pervasive. Operating with cultural compassion and responsiveness, we have mobilized economic development and our Community Multicultural Resource Centers are the hub of a thriving, vibrant community.
  
  
• School Attendance Momentum Team
  We envision an informed and engaged community with coordinated partnerships for effective education with our schools as the community’s foundation to a comprehensive health approach where every resident is safe, nurtured, and challenged to produce a green and healthy community. City Heights will celebrate cultural and language diversity through integrated youth leadership and mentoring through their lifespan.
  
  
• Senior Momentum Team
  
  
• Teen Sexual Health Momentum Team
  The Teen Sexual Health Momentum Team implements a proactive, comprehensive approach to promote and reinforce healthy sexual attitudes, behaviors and lifestyles amongst Mid-City teens. The TSH Momentum Team works to increase awareness and knowledge of the social, physical and emotional aspects of adolescent sexual health and well-being. We also work to mobilize communities to provide environments that support healthy lifestyles, and work with community groups and local government agencies to create policies and system change that positively affect teen sexual health.

History

When The California Endowment announced its intent to invest in City Heights over a 10 year period and that the community was to develop a plan to guide the funding over that time, Mid-City CAN became an ideal choice to lead the effort because of its history and commitment to providing a forum for community-based decision making and status as a community collaborative. The planning process that emerged demonstrated both the depth of Mid-City CAN's commitment to community, and the strength of will held by the residents of City Heights' to stand-up and work to improve quality of life.

The way in which Mid-City CAN was chosen to lead the planning process reflects the degree to which a value for being resident-driven guides the work of the Collaborative and guided the plan that emerged. Mid-City CAN's Coordinating Council, while interested in leading the process, agreed that the decision whether or not to partner with the Building Healthy Communities Initiative should be made by the larger community and with the utmost transparency - not by a small group of agencies that provide services within the community.

Within a week of The California Endowment’s announcement at the Networking Council, a group of approximately 30 stakeholders (with little or no residents present at that time) met to discuss the prospect of the Building Healthy Communities Initiative and agreed that Mid-City CAN should lead the effort.  However in light of the Coordinating Council’s commitment to making this a community decision, Mid-City CAN declined to accept the appointment at that time and instead held a Community Congress, like a town hall, where the Building Healthy Communities Initiative could be presented and the attendees could dialogue and decide whether or not to accept; as well as name who should lead it. 

In April of 2009, the Coordinating Council convened the first of three Community Congresses at Hoover High School, bringing together more than 200 people.  At this time there had been a few organizations who expressed some interest in leading Building Healthy Communities, but no formal petitions or applications were received by the time of the Community Congress.  At the Community Congress each attendee was given color-cards to rise in the decision-making process. After a presentation and a facilitated discussion about Building Healthy Communities, those present agreed to accept the initiative partnership and to have the Collaborative, Mid-City CAN, led it. All but a handful of attendees were in agreement.

Momentum Teams would be used to plan for Building Healthy Communities and be organized according to the Four Big Results. In the opening campaign, 27 House Meeting Leaders conducted 105 House Meetings in 13 different languages and involved 1,550 residents in focused discussions on the 10 Outcomes of Building Healthy Communities between July 2009 and October 2009. The results of these discussions, along with the data from two traditional surveys, provided a strong sense of what is important to City Heights residents. They included people living in poverty, immigrants (both documented and not), refugees whose length of time in the United States ranged from three months to more than a decade, and others.   The data gathered was used to prioritize the outcomes, identify the targeted changes, to develop change strategies, and to ascertain needed capacities and resources in the logic model. 

As House Meetings progressed, a preexisting Momentum Team, Food Justice, agreed to work on Big Result 2, Reverse Childhood Obesity Epidemic. Three new Momentum Teams were formed; Peace Promotion to work on Big Result 1, Reductions in Youth Violence; Access to Healthcare to work on Big Result 3, Provide a Health Home for All Children; and, School Attendance to work on Big Result 4, Increase School Attendance.  Soon after the initial convening, a fifth team, Built Environment was convened to respond to the community’s interest in Outcome 4, Residents Live in Communities with Health-Promoting Land Use, Transportation, and Community Development.

To ensure and develop leadership among youth, Mid-City CAN established a Youth Council. The Youth Council supports leadership development and youth participation in Momentum Teams through youth organizing. Youth participate as Momentum Team members, Co-chairs, and as House Meeting Leaders in the Building Healthy Communities Initiative.