Example 1: The Brandywine Center: In Pennsylvania, Wealthy County’s Poorer Residents Get A Healthy Place To Live
Although Chester County, Pennsylvania, has been considered one of the richest counties in the country, seven percent of its half-million residents live in poverty. Coatesville, a city of 13,000 people, is one such low-income pocket. To combat this problem, the Brandywine Health Foundation (BHF) constructed the Brandywine Center, a community hub. The four-story building houses health and dental services on the first floor, behavioral care on the fourth, and 24 units of affordable senior housing on the two middle floors. The BHF is committed to working toward both improved neighborhood conditions and improved health in this low-income community.
Contributed by Lia Thompson, University of Kansas, Community Tool Box Intern.
Example 2: Community Health And Literacy Center: A Health, Literacy & Recreation Hub
The Community Health and Literacy Center, formed out of a collaboration between the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and the City as unexpected partners, worked together to bring a neglected neighborhood both improved access to health care and health, promoting recreation and literacy opportunities.
The center, which opened in the spring of 2016, is a first-of-its-kind hospital-city partnership. The project includes a CHOP pediatric clinic; a full-service community health center run by the city’s department of public health; a branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia; and a modern recreation center with a playground and green space, run by the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation. It offers welcoming outdoor space for the neighborhood and an indoor community meeting space. The location has excellent public transit access, with a subway stop on site. CHOP and the city are working to integrate services and programming as a way to have more of an impact on improving population health.
Contributed by Lia Thompson, University of Kansas, Community Tool Box Intern.
Example 3: Vita Health & Wellness District: Health at the Center of a Neighborhood Transformation
The Vita Health & Wellness District project was established through a partnership between the Stamford housing authority and Stamford hospital to revitalize an impoverished inner city area, in Stamford Connecticut, into a mixed-income community with expanded neighborhood services centered around a sustainable urban farm. Addressing the social determinants of health provide a framework for managing the neighborhood transformation in ways that would support and strengthen the existing community.
The Vita project is a great example of how a hospital can fulfill the Affordable Care Act’s mandate to engage its community by partnering to address the social determinants of health. The project also demonstrates how a forward-thinking community development organization can effectively partner with the health sector to pursue comprehensive community revitalization that could not have been achieved otherwise. These are still early days in what promises to be a fruitful and long-lasting partnership.
Read more about the Vita Health & Wellness District project on the Building Healthy Places Network blog.
Contributed by Lia Thompson, University of Kansas, Community Tool Box Intern.
Example 4: Rolling Hills Apartments: Weaving Together Opportunities for Healthier Lives for a Diverse Immigrant Community
Twin Cities LISC, a local community development financial institution, has partnered with local organizations and city agencies to create quality affordable housing with improved healthcare access, including constructing a Federally Qualified Health Center. LISC also employed community health advocates to weave together the isolated health-related efforts in the neighborhood of focus into a cohesive health agenda. More specifically, they connect and help support existing efforts, identify and help address gaps, and facilitate the conversations and activities that sustain collaboration.
Learn how social determinants of health are being addressed to build healthier lives for immigrants in St. Paul, Minnesota in this Community Close-Up from the Building Healthy Places Network.
Contributed by Lia Thompson, University of Kansas, Community Tool Box Intern.
Example 5: Community Development 2.0—Collective Impact Focuses a Neighborhood Strategy for Health
The East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation (EBALDC) has built health into its strategic plan, and in the neighborhood revitalization work of The San Pablo Collaborative (SPARC), convened by EBALDC, health is the first priority. The San Pablo Area Revitalization Corridor neighborhood that stretches between downtown Oakland and Emeryville is considered to be one of the poorest and most disadvantaged areas of Oakland, California. Life expectancy in this area is up to 20 years lower than the neighboring area, Oakland Hills. SPARC works tirelessly to address the physical, social and economic factors-“social determinants”- that shape residents’ health in the San Pablo Avenue Corridor. SPARC partners work collectively in order to create an overall healthier environment for residents throughout the neighborhood. The California Hotel has been successfully preserved as affordable housing and a grocery store has been brought to this long abandoned neighborhood.
Learn how social determinants of health are being addressed to build healthier lives for the most disadvantaged areas of Oakland, California in this Community Close-Up from the Building Healthy Places Network.
Contributed by Lia Thompson, University of Kansas, Community Tool Box Intern.
Example 6: Revitalizing People and Place with a Healthy Food Hub Origin
Following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, the founders of what became Broad Community Connections (BCC) began to attend community meetings, and investigate with their fellow community members how to rebuild a city in disarray. These discussions highlighted many of the problems that many central New Orleans resident had faced even before the storm, including but not limited to economic disadvantage, community disinvestment, health disparities, and lack of access to many needed goods and services. BCC was designed to revitalize Broad Street, a commercial thoroughfare running through the heart of the city and to connect several of the central city neighborhoods.
Founded in 2008, BCC set its sights on improving health and improving economic vitality in the area. Ultimately, the ReFresh project provided a high-quality grocery store to a low-income food desert and created a multi-faceted hub to improve healthy food access and local food systems, foster community connectivity, support youth development, and anchor economic development.
Read more about the ReFresh project in New Orleans on the Building Healthy Places Network blog.
Contributed by Lia Thompson, University of Kansas, Community Tool Box Intern.
Example 7: Under One Roof: Health Care and Social Services in the Same Place
The Chicanos Por La Causa (CPLC) is the largest community development corporation based in Arizona. CPLC is committed to building stronger, healthier communities as a lead advocate, coalition builder, and direct service provider. CPLC helps more than 200,000 people through programs in four areas–housing, economic development, education, and health and human services. CPLC recognizes that the needs of the families it serves are complex as a family rarely approaches the CDC with only one need. As a result, CPLC sought to establish cross-sector partnerships that would more effectively and holistically meet the needs of families.
Read more about CPLC on Rooflines - The Shelterforce Blog, from the National Housing Institute.
Contributed by Lia Thompson, University of Kansas, Community Tool Box Intern.
Example 8: Supporting Childhood Wellness Through Healthy, Affordable Housing
In a low-income Philadelphia community, for-profit and non-profit developers have partnered to create Paseo Verde, a high-quality housing development highlighting resident and community health. The development prides itself on making healthy housing accessible even for families in poverty. This one-, two-, and three-bedroom apartment complex, Paseo Verde, supports children’s health through its environmentally sustainable design, on-site health center and pharmacy, resident service programs, and social service programs.
Read more in the profile from How Housing Matters.
Contributed by Lia Thompson, University of Kansas, Community Tool Box Intern.
Example 9: Housing and Soccer: A winning Team in East New York
Soccer is more than a game for many residents in a low-income Brooklyn neighborhood, as it has the potential to provide residents with an opportunity to a better life. HELP USA is an organization that provides shelter, housing and jobs to homeless and at risk people across five states. In addition, HELP USA through a partnership is able to provide medical and dental services and an after-school program. In recent years, HELP USA has incorporated soccer into its-after school program through its affiliate, Street Soccer USA (SSUSA). SSUSA and HELP USA’S goals align perfectly, as both organizations seek to improve health, education, and employment outcomes for the disadvantaged by using sports to teach life skills like punctuality and dependability.
Read more about HELP USA on How Housing Matters.
Contributed by Lia Thompson, University of Kansas, Community Tool Box Intern.
Example 10: The Hunger Hack
After a storm led to the cancellation of a church event in the Washington, D.C., suburbs last year, Tierney Screen found herself in a room filled with 3,600 unclaimed paper lunch bags, each containing a sandwich, fruit, chips, and cookies. Unable to distribute them by herself and the thought of having to toss them in the garbage pained her. A few months earlier she met a student who spoke about a website she and some other students created in which restaurants and community establishments could donate excess food to organizations that feed the hungry. Screen decided to call the student, Maria Rose Belding, who explained how to post the lunches on the site and within four hours, a nearby food pantry claimed them. The bags would be handed out to homeless people in Washington D.C.
Read more about The Hunger Hack.
Contributed by Lia Thompson, University of Kansas, Community Tool Box Intern.
Example 11: Creating Healthy Neighborhoods through Member Involvement
In New York City, there are an estimated 3 million people who live in a food desert, “an area with limited access to affordable and nutritious foods, particularly in a low-income area” (USDA). The majority of those directly affected are people of color.
In 2013 South Bronx, New York held a “day-long community conversation at the Food, Faith, and Health Disparities Summit to decide which actions could make their neighborhoods healthier.” There were 150 community members in attendance who were elderly, people of color, and those living in poor communities. All of these individuals are people who are directly affected by the lack of nutritious food sources in their community.
The summit was planned by New York Faith & Justice, Faith leaders for Environmental Justice, and Riverside Church; all of them concerned about food and health disparities in NYC. They went into it without solutions ready to implement, but instead listened to the community members with open ears and collectively came up with a plan on how to make improvements.
Community members are being asked to vote for those who support “creating food policy that includes everyone.” These organizations are giving community members a chance to change their own neighborhoods, and empowering them to take a stand for the health of their friends and family.
Learn more about how organizations are involving their community members: https://www.everyday-democracy.org/stories/creating-healthy-neighborhoods-through-action-and-policy-change