HEALTH EQUITY & COMMUNITY HEALTH

Using Indicators for Transformation: Addressing the Community Conditions for Health

Funded by: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and The Public Health Foundation

The re-release of the Community Health Status Indicators (CHSI) Project provides a valuable tool for public health professionals, advocates, community organizations and residents to identify, track, and alter the conditions that contribute to disparate health.  To ensure that communities are equipped to utilize this major national database on health indicators, Prevention Institute, with funding from the Public Health Institute and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is developing the following materials:

• A series of case studies that highlight how communities are effectively using indicators to address community conditions, shape local policy, and guide community health interventions. The profiles will also identify opportunities for public health to partner with community organizations and advocates.

• Training modules that address how to apply indicators, limitations, and how indicators have been used in various locales. The case studies and training will help communities more effectively address community conditions for health and close the health disparities gap.

California Works for Better Health

Funded by: The California Endowment

Prevention Institute provides training on a primary prevention approach to eliminating health disparities for California Works for Better Health grantees in four regional collaboratives across the state (Sacramento, Fresno, Los Angeles and San Diego). A joint project of The California Endowment and The Rockefeller Foundation launched in 2000, California Works for Better Health (CWBH) funded four community-based collaboratives to develop interventions designed to improve health through better jobs. The project’s goal was to increase low-income people’s access to regional economic opportunities and, ultimately, to improve their health indicators. As the CWBH initiative sunsets, Prevention Institute’s role is to equip each collaborative with the framework, language and tools to connect their work to a community-based approach to reducing and eliminating health disparities and improving underlying social conditions.

Eden Area Livability Initiative

Funded through Alameda County by a grant from the California Department of Transportation

Bringing optimism to communities and creating livable neighborhoods that support health requires a common vision, strong partnerships, and identifying concrete solutions to address community priorities. Prevention Institute is collaborating with Alameda County Supervisor Nate Miley on an 18-month-long livability initiative in 6 diverse communities. Through a process of sustained community engagement and strategy prioritization, using the THRIVE tool as a framework, the Eden Area Livability Initiative will develop an integrated vision of community livability, prioritize strategies necessary in order to make this vision a reality, and identify a set of catalyst projects that will address issues of greatest concern to community member and build momentum toward sustainable long-term change.

Past Projects:

THRIVE: Tool for Health and Resilience In Vulnerable Environments

Funded by: The California Endowment, The Office of Minority Health, and The Community Technology Foundation of California
With support from The California Endowment and the Office of Minority Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Prevention Institute developed THRIVE, a community health approach to health disparities. THRIVE was piloted nationally, and is now available as an interactive web-based tool designed to help people understand and prioritize the factors within their own communities that can help improve health and safety. The tool identifies key factors and allows a user to rate how important that factor might be in the community. It also provides information about how each factor is related to health outcomes and some direction about what to do to address the factor and where to go for more information. The translation of THRIVE into a web-based tool was funded by the Community Technology Foundation of California (CTFC). The CTFC helps underserved communities secure social justice, access, and equity through the application of information and communications technologies. View the THRIVE web tool or read the executive summary of the THRIVE final report.

The California Endowment's Healthy Communities Project

Funded by: The California Endowment

At the request of The California Endowment, Prevention Institute researched strategies for developing consensus around healthy community goals and primary prevention, with an overall goal of identifying key elements that reflect the health of that community and that effectively communicate what is critical for good health. The Healthy Communities Project sought to broaden the understanding of what leads to good health by developing the tools and resources that help policymakers and communities focus not only on access to and quality of medical care, but also on other elements that contribute to healthy communities.

Health Disparities Training for California Endowment Staff

Prevention Institute provided four full-day trainings to staff of The California Endowment (TCE) as they worked to shape their newly formed program area on Community Health and Elimination of Health Disparities between June and September 2005.  Trainings focused on describing a community-based approach to health disparities which emphasizes attention to community-level factors that can prevent negative health behaviors and outcomes. The four-part training series served to ground staff in key concepts in primary prevention and provided a framework for understanding and addressing health disparities in communities.  In addition to coordinating and implementing trainings, Prevention Institute developed proposal review questions, template PowerPoint presentations and a guidebook for TCE program staff.  Our goals were to enhance the skills of TCE staff to 1) assess effective grant proposals under their Health Disparities program area, 2) communicate the purpose and direction of the newly formed program area to prospective applicants, co-workers and TCE board members and 3) deliver technical assistance and support to current and prospective grantees to ensure projects looked beyond simply educational or clinical approaches to focus on primary prevention and community environments.