As the new year approaches, it’s time for fresh starts.

On Jan. 4, Gov. Janet T. Mills kicks off her second term, coming off a resounding victory in the November election. Speculation is mounting regarding her possible “legacy” initiatives. Affordable housing? New innovations in workforce training? A laser-like focus on Maine’s substance abuse epidemic?

The Maine Alliance for Health and Prosperity is all about big ideas and big actions.

What is the Alliance? A group of 30 individuals who convened just before Gov. Mills issued her signature report proposing an Economic Development Strategy for Maine in November 2019, only a few months before COVID derailed most of its recommendations.

Alliance members span diverse sectors, from health care to economic development, housing, community nonprofits and others. What mobilized us in 2019 has been magnified by three years of the COVID pandemic: the health of Maine’s economy has everything to do with reaching across organizational and sector boundaries to find “upstream” solutions to Maine’s most vexing challenges. Yes, access to medical care is important but contributing factors — jobs that pay a livable wage; affordable, accessible childcare; workforce training and education; safe and affordable housing; and food security — make the biggest impact on health outcomes.

What do “upstream” collaborations look like? They include senior housing where health care is accessed on-site via telehealth, childcare co-located with job sites, farmers providing excess produce to food pantries, and free workforce training and job placement for new immigrants of Maine. But these are not just ideas, they are happening now, thanks to the visionary leaders of Maine organizations such as Avesta Housing, Coastal Enterprises, Inc., and Good Shepard Food Bank, among others.

What do these examples have in common? They break down silos head-on, by creating unusual partnerships to get the job done. Moreover, they feature a powerful core belief that equity must be placed front and center. Why? Because we learned a harsh lesson from pandemic data, showing that social, cultural, and demographic factors, notably race and ethnicity, caused starkly different impacts on certain Maine communities. Poor COVID outcomes of Blacks, Hispanics, Indigenous peoples, and isolated rural residents are leading examples of our abject failures to protect and promote equity for all.

A fresh start for all of us is the hopeful emergence from a long period of COVID-related disruption that touched nearly every part of our lives. Putting political ideologies aside, President Biden and Congress responded to the crisis by passing the American Rescue Plan Act, pushing huge amounts of funding to states, counties, municipalities, and businesses to address the public health emergency and prop up a sputtering economy.

Gov. Mills acted swiftly, spreading resources across sectors with the biggest gaps: childcare infrastructure, workforce education and training for underrepresented communities, small business health insurance relief, outdated water and sewer infrastructure, and broadband. She and her staff placed Maine in the forefront of states rapidly distributing ARPA funds to support priorities identified by local decisionmakers – county commissioners, select boards and town managers and, in some cases, the general public.

Woven together, these investments represent new partnerships that recognize communities, people, and solutions must be fundamentally connected.

The road to health and prosperity is paved by many sectors working together to develop solutions that work for Maine people and communities. The COVID crisis made it clear that no single intervention—be it stimulus payments, new childcare supports, or expanded COVID testing — would get the population back on its feet. Integrated, systemic approaches were (and still are) called for.

Not only should categorial funding streams from public and private sources be woven together but state agencies should be challenged as well to collaborate and innovate. Too often, they become siloed, bound by the real and perceived funding constraints placed by the federal government.  Imagine a regional, coordinated approach to transportation developed by Maine DOT and the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, partnering to deliver MaineCare patients to doctor appointments, connect commuters and students to college campuses, and transport workers to and from jobs.

We can and should expect state agencies to cooperate while using these unprecedented federal funds.  The same can be said for state and municipal relationships. We should expect the lines of communication to be open, active, and cooperative. And it’s not only government that needs to act outside the box, but business, nonprofits, health care and others.

Maine ranks among the top 10 states in getting ARPA funds committed and out the door. So too should Maine lead the way in documenting the impact of these investments. While state government is to be commended for its transparency posting all its ARPA grants on state websites, it should go the extra mile and publish outcomes as well.

Huge amounts of taxpayer dollars rolled downhill from the federal government to states, counties, and municipalities to repair the damage from the COVID pandemic. The Alliance encourages accountability to ensure that Maine made good use of these investments.

The New Year is a perfect time to make a fresh start by breaking through organizational silos and imagined boundaries. Let’s make best use of these recovery funds to invest in a future that advances equity, prosperity, and health for all Maine people.

Deborah Deatrick, MPH, and Lisa Miller, MPH, are convenors of the Maine Alliance for Health and Prosperity.