By Patricia Marrone Bennett, Ph.D.

The New Year encourages us to look back at the past year and reminisce about all we’ve done. I will break with that tradition and begin by telling you about what RDA is planning to do in 2018.

We will continue to be inspired by all of our clients and the important work that they do. We look forward to partnering with them as we move the needle on social justice issues.

We will work on behalf of the most vulnerable populations by:

• Working to transform our justice systems through research, planning, and evaluation
• Planning and evaluating community supports and services for those re-entering from prison or jail
• Redesigning behavioral health crisis systems to interrupt the cycle of homelessness, hospitalization, and incarceration
• Implementing transformative programs for child welfare issues
• Writing large-scale grants for health and human services, behavioral health, education, supportive housing, justice systems, workforce development, and more
• Addressing health care disparities to ensure the health and well-being of older adults, adults and children with disabilities, and mothers and children
• Designing and evaluating programs that help connect homeless individuals to supportive housing and social services

We will infuse our core values into all that we do. These values include:

• We will be unwavering in our commitment to social justice
• We will continue to believe that people and organizations can change and we will support them in every way we can
• We will be thought partners with each other and with our clients
• We will be energy generators as we encourage others by modeling the way

Just as we have done throughout our history, we will use data in all of our endeavors and translate analysis into meaningful and actionable information. We are excited about expanding our ability to innovate IT solutions so that our clients have access to their data through the use of dashboards and other user-friendly tools.

During 2017, our staff grew to a diverse team of 42 and we moved our Oakland offices to 2333 Harrison Street. (The lovely flowers seen above are out in front of our new office.) In 2018, we will continue to attract and retain the best of the best researchers, evaluators, grant writers, facilitators, data analysts, and planners.

For more information about what we are doing and what we have done please come back and visit this blog, which will give you more insight into some of our efforts.

May your 2018 be happy, healthy, and peaceful.