Built to Last – The Intersections Initiative and Healing-Centered Capacity Building

Guest Post – Jason Lacsamana, Director, Programs and Partnerships

When I think about the story of the St. Joseph Fund and our tagline “Rooted In Love”, our 10-year partnership with Prevention Institute is one of the clearest examples of what that means.

Sandra Viera, a Director at Prevention Institute and longtime friend and partner, joined me on one of the early episodes of our to talk about our relationship and our efforts. We talked about how our partnership began with the Intersections Initiative across California and how its lessons are shaping the next decade of healing-centered capacity building in places in Washington state.

Back in 2016, SJF was at a turning point. We were proud of our traditional health grantmaking that funded services, clinics, and programs, but we were all asking a deeper question: What would it look like to address root causes rather than just symptoms?

Hallway Introductions

When I heard Prevention Institute leaders speak at a Grantmakers in Health conference, I recognized that we shared a language. Terms like social determinants of health, structural drivers, and upstream change weren’t phrases being used as widely back then. We were aligned in so many ways, I knew that if we could leverage our unique tie to the Providence St. Joseph health system and make space for experimentation, we could co-design strategies to build healthier communities.

What grew out of this chance meeting was the “Intersections Initiative,” named in recognition of the fact that many forces shape lives at once and that change has to meet them where those forces converge. From the beginning, Intersections was intentionally not a typical foundation initiative. Instead of a pre-written logic model with fixed outcomes, we led with a few core commitments:

• Communities would define success for themselves.
• Hospitals would be partners at the table, not the ones leading.
• The focus would be on root causes and structural drivers—not just more programs.

Seven communities across California were invited to open houses where the main promise was simple but, for many, radical: You will shape this. We will resource the planning, not just the implementation.

Built to Last

Those early gatherings looked different in every place, and what united them was a hunger for something more than another short-term grant cycle.

As the initiative gained momentum, I focused not on what we could accomplish in one grant cycle, but what we could build together. Intersections allowed communities to choose their issue focus, like safe and affordable housing, transportation, parks, food access, education, and violence prevention. But beneath the surface, the work consistently:

• Strengthened relationships between organizations that had often been working side by side, but not truly together.
• Created collaboratives that could move policy levers across sectors.
• Built infrastructure for community voice, so that residents could influence how decisions and dollars flowed.

Intersections didn’t force a single solution; instead, it offered time, facilitation, and flexible support so local leaders could define what “success” meant in their context.

Holding Steady

By early 2020, the seven California Intersections sites were entering what was supposed to be their final year. Collaborative tables were in place, and strategies were advancing. And then COVID hit.

Suddenly, communities were in crisis. The instinct was to pivot entirely to emergency services, but, together with the Prevention Institute, we asked whether what we had been building all along could serve this moment.

Because of Intersections, these communities already had:

• Cross-sector collaboratives ready to mobilize.
• Established relationships with hospitals, local governments, and county leaders.
• A shared vocabulary around equity, trauma, and structural drivers.

Instead of dissolving, Intersection’s sites leveraged their infrastructure to advance community priorities in the rapidly evolving COVID-19 response. This was a powerful confirmation that what we were building before the crisis made a different kind of response possible during the crisis and continues to shape recovery years later.

Healing-Centered Capacity Building

Intersections has changed all of us. From the outside, SJF can look like a traditional health foundation, but Intersections helped us fully embrace a deeper identity as a healing-centered capacity builder.

We’re not supporting organizations in writing better grants or building sustainable budgets. We are resourcing the relational, organizational, and narrative work that allows communities to heal from past harm, claim their own power, and reimagine the systems around them.

Because of Intersections’ early success and as our footprint expanded beyond California, we saw an opportunity to carry Intersections’ core principles to new places. Phase 2 of Intersections officially launched in South King County, Washington, last year, carrying forward and applying the lessons we’ve learned over nearly 10 years.

This work is also unfolding in a time of climate-fueled disasters and renewed tensions around racial justice. Intersections is helping explore what it means to bring a prevention lens into recovery and rebuilding—so that when communities re-establish housing, infrastructure, or services after a disaster, they do so with equity and long-term safety at the center.

Inviting Us In

The future of Intersections is about more than one initiative. It’s about how we can continue to tell the story of how communities turned flexible support into lasting infrastructure and how new and future partners can weave our past lessons into their work. It’s also about learning with our peers – funders, systems leaders, and organizers – as we move towards power building. And above all, it’s about holding onto the relational heart of this partnership and rooting that laughter and love into everything we do.

We’re grateful for companions like Prevention Institute, and for communities that invite us into courageous, long-haul work. Intersections has always been a way of walking together toward systems that reflect love, justice, and healing.

 

If you’d like to hear from Sandra directly on how Intersections has evolved, I hope you’ll check out the full podcast on our website or YouTube.