COMMUNITY ACTION NETWORK
The Community Action Network (CAN) is a collaborative network focused on leveraging expertise and community assets to inform community conversations, identify areas of opportunity, and programs and activities that work to eliminate infant mortality with the African American/Black communities in northeast Denver and north Aurora. The CAN is comprised of over 50 people representing a variety of organizational backgrounds, content expertise, and lived experience.
The CAN utilizes the model of community organizing known as Assets Based Community Development, which asserts that building and strengthening communities requires utilizing the current and potential assets of the community, rather than focusing on needs and deficits. This strengths-based strategy emphasizes partnerships and associations, focuses on community, and believes that people are the answer to difficult issues communities may face. Partnerships and members of the CAN include:
- Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment
- Denver Public Health Department
- Tri-County Healthy Department
- Children’s Hospital Colorado
- University of Colorado School of Public Health and the Center for Public Health Practice
- City of Aurora
- City and County of Denver