About Enterprising Health

Enterprising Health is a partnership between the community of Flint, MI and Ascension Health, the nation's largest non-profit healthcare provider.

Enterprising Health seeks to innovate and develop new grassroots enterprises focused on improving the health of communities in Flint and Genesee County, with a particular focus on those most in need and those who have been bypassed by traditional systems and businesses. By working collaboratively with community resources, local partners, and poor and vulnerable families and individuals, this multi-year project will follow a participatory business innovation process to co-create and implement sustainable, community entrepreneur-led businesses.

Enterprising Health utilizes the Base of the Pyramid Protocol, which has been used in other areas of the world to involve community entrepreneurs and business/agency partners in co-developing sustainable, enterprise-based solutions. The Protocol calls for a small team of specially trained individuals from inside and outside the Flint area to immerse themselves in an under-served community. The team lives and works side by side with members of the community in a process of "opening up": to learn first-hand the community's challenges and opportunities, earn trust, empower new entrepreneurs, co-identify unmet health needs, and co-develop methods by which to meet those needs in a sustainable way.

Experience with the Protocol indicates that through a deep process of relationship building, workshops and partnerships 1) community entrepreneurs and interested businesses/agencies will emerge as partners and 2) health-related opportunities and potential sustainable “business models” will be identified.

Fundamental to the process is that it is not enough to “identify” issues and opportunities; the community and project partners must act on the opportunities in a sustainable way by creating, testing, and evolving community entrepreneur-led enterprises.