Case Study: The Champlain Initiative

In 1995, the area’s two major hospitals announced a merger, creating a variety of changes in policy and funding for state and federal health care reimbursement. Due to a concern for how the local health care delivery system might be affected by these events, Burlington’s chapter of the United Way convened a series of meetings of local non-profit health care providers to discuss the issue of health care in the community. The group soon realized the need to expand to include all sectors of the community in the dialogue. After a series of meetings and the development of a multi-stakeholder Steering Committee, the Champlain Initiative was born.

The Initiative first came together on March 22, 1996 when 250 people from the community re-sponded to an invitation to "create a community-wide strategic planning and visioning process for a healthy Chittenden County." A nine-month process complete with facilitators and work teams led to the adoption of a common "Vision for a Healthy Champlain Valley."

The Initiative now hosts community stakeholder meetings three times a year. The topics for these meetings come from community input and often result in the formation of volunteer citizen teams to address the problem. As a result of this visioning process, ten initiative teams have been developed, addressing important issues such as spirituality, democracy, early childhood education, public health, and urban sprawl.

The Initiative provides a place for conversation, dialogue, and relationship building on issues al-ready important to the community. It also stresses the importance of multi-sector participation in addressing these issues and works to highlight the relevance of community problems to the various sectors in the community.

Cross Sectoral Benefits

Economy: Initiative has established indicators on the cost of living, unemployment, and livable wage.

Governance: Encouraged registration of voters by producing a voter-registration kit to help businesses do voter registration among their employees which resulted in a 10% increase in registered voters.

Social: 11 "Success by Six" teams have been created.

Champlain Counts Report

Executive Summary Brochure

The History of Sprawl in Chittenden County

Champlain Initiative Vision