Dear friends,

It’s my pleasure to hand over this month’s newsletter greeting to my colleague, HealthBegins Vice President of Learning and Innovation, Glasha Marcon. Enjoy!

Best,

Rishi Manchanda, MD, MPH.

As the year winds down into a period of rest and reflection, I’m meditating on resilience. This year brought unprecedented attacks on vulnerable populations and our social safety net. When the heaviness and fear threatened to feel overwhelming, I found steadiness in my community.

I live in the East Lake neighborhood of Oakland, California—a place that’s diverse in every sense of the word: economically, racially, topographically, ethnically, generationally. Historic Victorian homes and affordable housing units sit side by side. East Lake features Oakland’s best Laotian restaurant, an annual Halloween block party, and front yards with fig trees and makeshift dragon fruit trellises. About twenty percent of my neighbors live below the poverty line and receive healthcare through Medicaid.

I love my neighborhood. I find the texture and energy beautiful and comforting. It’s real. But what makes a neighborhood a community?

Community, for me, means walking every morning by Xochi the Dog Café, a true third space. I chat with the regulars: the retired neighbors and their pups, baby-carrying parents, firefighters stopping by for a quick cup. I buy something there not because I need it (though the drinks and food are delicious), but because I want it to keep existing.

Community means our neighborhood mutual aid group lighting up after an earthquake—partly to find solidarity in the strange experience of feeling a quake alone, but mostly to check in and to make sure everyone is okay. It’s the same group that shares food resources and support in anticipation of ICE activity.

Community means visiting my local farmers market nearly every weekend for the past eight years. Vendors there have watched me transition from shopping alone to shopping with a toddler balanced on my hip. A couple of weekends ago, Cathy from the dim sum stand waved me over and handed me my usual, on the house. No explanation. Just a simple, “Happy holidays.”

The connection and rootedness I feel and witness in my community bring me joy and give me hope. People know and look out for each other. I feel like I am woven into the fabric of this place, that I am needed, and that simple acts of solidarity and care have an impact. 

We often talk about resilience as an individual skill, but the ability to withstand or recover from adversity is a communal practice, too. It’s found in routine encounters, in third spaces, in the quiet infrastructure of community. It’s being seen, asking for help, and being needed. It’s interdependence, practiced daily. 

Thank you for being part of the HealthBegins community. Through our conversations, our work together, and our shared commitment to a healthier and more equitable future, we find joy, hope, and resilience. As the year comes to an end, may you rest, tend to the communities that sustain you, and carry the resilience you’ve built into the year ahead.

Best,

Glasha Marcon