Reflect — Hold Up a Mirror | Center For Health Justice

Reflection bridges the gap between community input and institutional change. Organizations must critically examine how their actions (or inactions) have contributed to mistrust, and assess where they fall short in demonstrating key trustworthy behaviors such as humility, transparency, and respect.

Reflection is about examining your institution through the lens of community feedback. The toolkit’s 10 Principles of Trustworthiness serve as the foundation for this work, connecting real community values with concrete organizational behaviors. The principles represent the voices of communities speaking to organizations and institutions with power and privilege.

Purpose: To compare what was heard from the community with how the institution currently operates.
Goal: A clear sense of where the institution aligns and where it falls short in embodying trustworthiness.

Reflection invites institutions to examine how they could respond to the themes raised during listening efforts. It may be an opportunity to confront uncomfortable truths and an organization’s past behaviors.

Tools and Resources to Support Reflection

Step 1: Review the Principles of Trustworthiness. These 10 community-developed principles define what trustworthiness looks like from the perspective of communities and reflect the values and behaviors that communities expect from institutions.

10 Principles of Trustworthiness (PDF)

Step 2: Connect community input to the Principles. How do the 10 Principles resonate with the insights gathered during the listening sessions? Where are themes showing up repeatedly? Where are there gaps? The key behaviors associated with each principle are embedded in the Reflection Guide and serve as practical indicators of how each can be demonstrated.

Reflection Guide (PDF)

Step 3: Assess strengths and areas for focus. Use the reflection questions to guide institutional self-assessment. This set of 10 community-developed and -tested questions—presented in survey, interview and focus group formats—is designed to evaluate institutional trustworthiness. Communities can select which assessment method works best for them.

Community Survey (English DOC)
Community Survey (Spanish PDF)
by TRUE Together: Trust, Respect, Unity, and Equity; Sacramento, California
Interview Guide (English DOC)
Focus Group Guide (English DOC)

“This process wasn’t dictated to us—we turned it into what made sense for our community.”

– Community Representative, Omaha, Nebraska

PHASE 3: Act