what makes a community healthy essay

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What makes a community healthy? According to the  Lincy Institute , health isn’t just determined by the lack of illness, but also by the all-around wellbeing of residents physically, mentally, and socially. Here are 10 factors that contribute to a healthy and happy community. 

Education isn’t just about being smart. Studies show that children who do poorly in school have a higher risk of being physically unhealthy than adults. Quality education is also linked to the socio-economic background since poorer communities often have access to lower-quality education programs due to funding. Better and higher education leads to a higher quality of life and longevity, as well as less substance abuse . 

Employment/Income

There is a strong connection between consistent employment and good health. Unemployed individuals usually have  “higher levels of impaired mental health including depression, anxiety, and stress as well as higher levels of mental health hospital admissions, chronic disease (cardiovascular disease, hypertension, musculoskeletal disorders) and premature mortality.”  

Unemployment is also linked to higher drug, alcohol, and cigarette use. This doesn’t mean that people not working are automatically compelled to drink and smoke. However, external stresses of being unemployed, as well as the extra unstructured time, influence these choices. 

Transportation 

Reliable and safe transportation is essential for having access to healthcare, jobs, public facilities (like parks), grocery stores, and being able to socialize. Walking, while healthy, can be dangerous, especially if you have to walk through unsafe neighborhoods or highways. Plus, walking everywhere isn’t sustainable, especially in spaced-out areas. Thus, being able to take a bus or a train is essential for a healthy community. 

Exercise and Nutrition 

Eating correctly, maintaining a healthy weight, and moving enough are all important for general health and chronic disease prevention in a community. The  Lincy Institute  states that “people are more likely to be physically active or to maintain a healthy weight if they live in a community which supports physical activity and healthy eating.” Well-maintained sidewalks, low traffic and crime, walking and cycling trails, parks, public recreational facilities, and even a lack of graffiti all help get people out and move more. 

Healthcare 

Healthcare and health insurance seem to go hand in hand in the United States. Individuals without health insurance or more likely to push visiting the doctor or getting a prescription because of cost. Children also bear the weight of not having access to affordable healthcare or health insurance, and won’t get the preventative healthcare they need to grow into healthy adults. 

Investing in Community 

Putting money back into the community improves the lives of its residents. It’s projected that a $10 investment per person per year in “ community-based health promotion programs ” would create 1.7 billion dollars in savings for the state of California in three years. Eating better, moving more, not smoking, and drinking less are the focuses of these community programs. 

Well-Built Homes

Unsafe or poorly-maintained homes can negatively affect those who live in them. They can make them sick or increase the risk for household accidents. Lead poisoning is higher in houses built before 1978. Other concerns include neurotoxins like pesticides, bad ventilation, pests, damp and mold. 

Sex Education 

Proper sex education  teaches teenagers how to be safe, including how to avoid STIs and STDs. It also gives them more knowledge about relationships and consent, not just sex itself. When they receive the correct information they need and deserve to know, they can make the right choices regarding their bodies and relationships. 

Clean Water 

According to the  World Health Organisation , convenient access to water can “boost countries’ economic growth and can contribute greatly to poverty reduction.” Contaminated water is also incredibly dangerous, and can spread diseases like diarrhea, typhoid, polio, cholera, and dysentery. Access to water also means that households don’t have to spend hours a day walking to and from a well. Instead, they can use that time to focus on education, building a career, or spending time with family. 

Protection Against Domestic Violent 

Women are safer in communities that  reduce the risk of sexual violence . Having a safe place to ask for help, or just living in a society that believes women and protects them from domestic violence is an important part of women living healthy, violence-free lives. 

Safe, clean, healthy, and happy homes make a healthy community. Some of these factors are objectively more important than others, but together they significantly improve the lives of a community’s residents, especially the lives of the children. Hopefully, our leaders will take these into account and prioritize people rather than corporations. It’s time that money be invested into communities and their wellbeing, rather than just continuing to find last-minute bandaid solutions to pervasive issues. 

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A Healthy Community is a Prepared Community

What does a prepared community look like?

As communities look at how to prepare for the next emergency, they usually focus on stockpiling emergency supplies, having clear alert networks and ways to communicate with the public, and designating evacuation routes and shelter locations. While all of these are key aspects of emergency planning, one area of preparedness that is often overlooked is community health. Community Health is a term used to describe the state of health and how easy or difficult it is to be healthy where people live, learn, work and play. The health of a community, including ease of access to medical care and community resources available for exercise and encouraging healthy habits, is an important part of emergency planning that can have a positive impact on a community before, during, and after a public health emergency.

What is a Healthy Community?

How is a Healthy Community Better Prepared?

Unhealthy communities often have a large number of individuals that are more vulnerable before, during, and after a disaster. Factors that lead to poor health in communities such as high rates of chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease, limited access to general medical care, and low levels of health education, can cause substantial difficulties for a community recovering from an emergency event. Gaps in medical care can increase significantly after a disaster due to physical damage to health care facilities or from a large increase in the number of people who need medical attention. People who already have poor health are usually more susceptible to disease during a public health emergency and cannot get the normal day-to-day medical care they need.

Make Your Community Healthy and Prepared

Help promote health in your community by becoming more engaged in your community. Encourage local community groups and government organizations to consider community health in their emergency preparedness plans. Take action to improve your community’s health now to ensure you are better prepared to remain healthy when an emergency occurs.

8 comments on “A Healthy Community is a Prepared Community”

Comments listed below are posted by individuals not associated with CDC, unless otherwise stated. These comments do not represent the official views of CDC, and CDC does not guarantee that any information posted by individuals on this site is correct, and disclaims any liability for any loss or damage resulting from reliance on any such information. Read more about our comment policy » .

Living a healthy lifestyle and maintaining healthy habits is disaster prepare kit in it self. Most people think and often we teach that preparing for an emergency it is essential have “emergency items” such as flashlights and blankets, and water. These items are very important as essential needs to sustain life include, nutrition, shelter and water. In the event of an emergency, having a healthy life style gives you an advantage to sustaining life as no one can truly predict exactly how an emergency event will affect them or their immediate environment. Elders are typically the most affected by disasters due to often their health status. Encouraging things such as eating nutritious meals so that your body has sufficient nutrient stores, and performing physical activities to promote physical health and limit the needs of medications and additional assistance that may be very limited in event of emergency is important. Having healthy habits builds a stronger you, building stronger immune systems and fighting infection that can rise to very high level during emergencies as many situations force persons to live in close quarters such as shelters. Helping yourself also helps others!

Vaccinations provide an important defense against disease and infection for both the young and the old. Additionally, a sound vaccination protocol helps protect the general public from a possible outbreak occurring. The possibility of an epidemic re-occurring is a real and legitimate concern, so continued vaccination of the general public is necessary. The health benefits that a proactive vaccination schedule provides for children and the society in which they live far outweighs the potential risk associated with vaccinations; therefore, childhood vaccinations should be administered to every child on a regular schedule.

I solely love the idea of a community coming together to prepare for and work through disease and infection epidemics, as well as injury or disaster incidences. The people are the heart of the community and working together to achieve the same purpose speaks volumes of the community’s residents. Disease prevention and health promotion are important aspects in maintaining the health of the community. Each individual resident plays a personal role in promoting community health. This is achieved when residents exercise 3-4 times a week, eat a nutritious and balanced diet, get adequate amounts of rest and sleep, and stay up-to-date on vaccinations and immunizations. Promoting and maintaining a healthy community is everybody’s business and the responsibility of every individual living in it.

Consuming healthy meals, vaccinating your children, and devising an exercise plan are all steps that can help in improving the health of the community. Vaccinations are necessary in order to protect the youth and the community as a whole. There are health clinics located in many communities to ensure that every child can be vaccinated or immunized no matter what their income is.

Great article. Couldn’t be write much better!

This was great! Can’t wait for your upcoming content! What have you got planned for us?

It is interesting to note that everyone in the population has a part to play in community health. The health of a community rests not only on the government and policy makers but also on the community workers. Healthy communities recover well because the roles and responsibilities of the community health worker are at play and well followed. The income,race,education or location of individuals is not a stumbling block to getting proper and good health services and resources.

it would be interesting to talk about active and healthy communities

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10 Traits That Make a Positive Community

Before answering that question, let’s zoom out a little bit.

Humans are made to live and work with others in a community where we can thrive. We are social beings that have evolved to exist within communities.

The quality of a community is often dictated by the degree of engagement and happiness individuals can draw from community interactions. Yet, sadly, some communities promote feelings of self-doubt and isolation.

Positive communities are groups that inspire their members in ways that promote a sense of self-discovery and group connection, encourage members to express their beliefs and values and build relationships with others.

Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Positive Relationships Exercises for free . These detailed, science-based exercises will help you or your clients build healthy, life-enriching relationships.

This Article Contains:

What is a community, what is a positive community, 5 drivers of helpful community formation, 10 traits of positive communities, 5 quotes about positive communities, a take-home message.

While most of us know intuitively what is meant by the word ‘community,’ the term has been used to refer to a wide range of different phenomena throughout time. For instance, the word is often used to refer to co-location in a neighborhood, social capital (i.e., thinking of others as resources), or social organization at a state or national level (Mah & Carpenter, 2016).

Today, the word can mean all or none of these things.

A synthesis of definitions from sociology suggests that a community is a social unit (or group of living things) that share something in common, such as customs, identifying characteristics, values, beliefs , or norms (Mah & Carpenter, 2016).

To illustrate, it is likely you have heard references to the term ‘LGBTQI+ community.’ This is a loosely defined grouping of individuals, organizations, and social movements who take an interest in the rights and subcultures of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex populations.

In line with the definition of a community, members of the LGBTQI+ community share common identifying characteristics (e.g., gender identity, sexual preference) and values (e.g., the freedom to openly express one’s identity).

Communities are based around networks of social relations that extend beyond one’s immediate family, and they are thought to have some longevity. That is, members of a community stay in regular social contact with one another.

Further, while being physically situated close to other community members is sometimes necessary for that community to thrive, there has been a rise in mobile and virtual communities that are challenging classic understandings of the term.

For instance, the 100 million users that regularly log in to online games like World of Warcraft (MMO Populations, n.d.) are part of a global virtual community. Likewise, online forums and Facebook groups on niche hobbies are other forms of virtual community.

Positive experiences with communities allow individuals to feel more connected to their environment and the people in it. Further, the connection that comes with being in a community can act as a support system for members when they require encouragement or help.

Indeed, the power of community involvement is well-recognized by scholars and can help combat the sense of isolation that can be felt among social minorities.

For instance, one study of mental health among bisexual women found that participating in a bisexual-specific community 2-3 times per week helped reduce the impact of internalized negative attitudes about one’s bisexuality on depressive symptoms (Lambe, Cerezo, & O’Shaughnessy, 2017).

Similarly, another study showed that rural, low-income mothers who regularly engaged with their faith-based communities exhibited fewer depressive symptoms (Garrison, Marks, Lawrence, & Braun, 2005).

Scientific recognition of the benefits of community involvement for mental health has translated to a range of mental health campaigns across the world. For example, Australia’s long-running Act-Belong-Commit campaign encourages people to be mentally healthy by getting involved with a local community group and committing to a meaningful cause, such as through volunteering (Act-Belong-Commit, n.d.).

At a national level, Iceland embarked on a plan to reduce teenage alcohol and drug consumption by providing more access to community sporting groups.

The results of the campaign were groundbreaking. Following the initiative, the percentage of teenagers who reported excessive alcohol consumption in the previous month dropped from 42% in 1998 to 5% in 2016. Likewise, the percentage who reported ever using cannabis dropped from 17% to 7%, and cigarette use fell from 23% to 3% (Young, 2017).

Based on these results, it is clear that involvement in positive communities can have a tangible impact on individuals by helping them avoid negative outcomes, such as poor mental health, by providing a sense of belonging and directing members’ attention and energy toward beneficial activities.

However, involvement in positive communities can bring about positive change in the broader environment, too.

In his book, Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making , leading expert on collaborative decision making, Sam Kaner (2014), describes the process that community groups undergo when trying to bring about change in an environment.

To achieve change, members of a group must navigate what Kaner refers to as the “ groan zone .” This is referred to as such because it is uncomfortable and sometimes marked by conflict. However, when parties build trust and communicate a shared vision with those who have the power to enact change, positive outcomes can result.

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There are two key reasons why communities may form.

• Communities tend to form when one or more individuals want to connect with others possessing similar values, beliefs, interests, etc., and such a group doesn’t currently exist, or
• Inadvertently, as a result of being co-located.

Whether such groups form on purpose or by accident, discovering others with whom we share common characteristics can be incredibly comforting and rewarding. Involvement in positive and encouraging communities can also facilitate self-reflection and exploration of core values and beliefs.

Here are five key grounds upon which communities tend to form (and why others may be motivated to join said communities; Perkins, 2015).

1. Shared identity

It is common for communities to form among those who share a common sense of identity. For instance, alumni group-members share a history at the same learning institution. Likewise, ethnic communities share aspects of their culture and heritage in common.

2. Shared purpose

Those who feel passionately about social causes will often band together as a community. These objectives can be large-scale, such as working together to eradicate a particular disease, or be on a smaller, more local scale, such as a community that seeks to get a particular party member elected.

3. Common objectives

Some communities are united by concrete goals or the pursuit of mutually beneficial outcomes. For instance, millions of Facebook users around the world engage with Facebook’s many buy-and-sell communities.

These communities are formed by everyday Facebook users so that people can buy, sell, and bid on niche categories of items. Thus, these groups’ members share common objectives, such as acquiring new possessions or making a profit on ones that are no longer needed.

4. Shared interests or passions

Many communities form based on common interests or hobbies, such as in Iceland’s example of teen sporting groups. Examples of interests that may lead to community formation include the arts, sports, cooking, cultures, and games.

5. Common Behavior

Communities can serve to hold their members accountable for enacting particular behaviors and reaching certain goals.

When a person commits to achieve a goal, they are typically less likely to succeed when they do so in private. If they start deviating from their objective, there will be no one present to hold them accountable.

Conversely, when a person verbalizes their goals to others within a community, there is a social expectation that they will achieve that goal. Thus that person becomes more likely to succeed (Oppong, 2017).

Further, when someone faces hurdles to achieving a goal, others in their community pursuing similar objectives can provide support and empathize with their situations. Good examples of such communities include Alcoholics Anonymous and weight-loss groups (Perkins, 2015).

1. Common goals

Effective communities often share similar values and belief systems. These can motivate its individuals to accomplish mutually held goals, the nature of which may vary depending on the group in question.

For example, one community may value environmental goals, such as promoting recycling and making forest areas more habitable for wildlife. In contrast, another community may place value on an effective education system and thereby work toward the goal of influencing education policy.

2. Freedom of expression

Central to developing a positive community is comfort among its members when it comes to speaking their minds and expressing what is important to them.

Individuals who feel encouraged to give input about an issue and who feel heard when they speak their minds are more likely to feel connected to their community. Further, successful communities recognize the importance of opinions that diverge from the majority and are open to hearing these (Greenberg & Edwards, 2009).

In contrast, dysfunctional communities tend to silence voices that diverge from those espoused by the majority or group leaders.

At best, communities with such dynamics may miss opportunities to improve their practices and enhance their members’ fulfillment from their involvement (Bashshur & Oc, 2015). At worst, they may harm their members by isolating them from diverse viewpoints or exerting undue control.

3. Address member concerns with sensitivity

Not only is it important to create a community that encourages the voicing of concerns, but it is also important to ensure that members feel their concerns are adequately addressed.

Positive communities prioritize their members’ wellbeing and address concerns in a timely and sensitive manner when they arise. For community leaders, this means taking the time to listen carefully to any concerns raised and taking the necessary steps to assess risks and conduct further investigations when necessary.

Throughout this process, community leaders need to act fairly, keep clear records, and maintain good communication with the member who initially raised the concern (Whistleblowing Helpline, 2016). Sometimes, it may also be appropriate to protect the member’s identity by referring to the community member anonymously in any documentation.

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4. Set clear policies and obligations

Strong and enduring communities typically set clear rules and expectations to guide the conduct of its members. Doing so ensures that there is as little ambiguity as possible regarding what is and is not okay and will help minimize misunderstandings.

Depending on the community’s nature, it may be helpful to establish a code of conduct that explicitly links a community’s mission, values, and principles to expected standards of behavior. Such a code can then help community members to behave ethically, meet their obligations, and carry out day-to-day decision making (Ethics & Compliance Initiative, n.d.).

5. Fairness

With policies and expectations clearly in place, enforcement of these rules should be applied fairly.

Feeling a sense of fairness is critical to the experience of good relationships, and good relationships are often a key driver of people’s involvement in communities (Butorova, n.d.). Therefore, a community that does not apply its rules fairly risks inadvertently driving away its members and producing feelings of disconnection.

For instance, the community member who feels that they must ‘pick up the slack’ for another member who has neglected to meet their obligations may begin to feel resentment toward this member. They may also feel resentment toward the community’s leadership, who have failed to hold this member accountable.

6. Celebrate heritage and traditions

Every long-standing community has heritage and traditions that have arisen during the community’s development. Positive communities embrace their culture by reminding members of the long way the community has come.

There are many ways to celebrate a community’s heritage and traditions. One way is through its artifacts–observable symbols and signs of a community’s culture (Ott, 1989).

Examples of artifacts include a community’s stories and legends, such as a dramatic tale of how the community was formed; Wilkins, 1983; language, in the way members greet one another; rituals and ceremonies (Smith & Stewart, 2011), and physical structures or symbols such as trophies or the design of physical spaces.

7. Promote interaction among members

Positive communities work to foster a feeling of genuine connection among members by providing plenty of interaction opportunities. Doing this can motivate members to meet their obligations and work toward the established goals of the community.

More specifically, crafting opportunities for members to experience emotional contagion in their interactions is key.

Emotional contagion occurs when two or more people focus on a common activity and emotional experience, generating feelings of group solidarity (Collins, 2004). Examples of activities that may induce emotional contagion feelings include protesting about a cause a community is passionate about or singing along to songs together at a karaoke night.

8. Elect leaders that stand by community values

Individuals elected to leadership positions within positive communities should be fair and just in their focus. Their shared values should inform the decisions they make on behalf of the community.

Where possible, leaders should be diverse and represent the full scope of views and identities present within the community, such as electing an equal balance of men and women to a board.

9. Prioritize effective communication

Communication is essential for any effective community. Not only does this mean clearly communicating policies, rules, and expectations, but it also means keeping members up to date about ongoing projects, changes to policies, and upcoming events.

Often, communities will set up their own customized channels to facilitate effective communication . Examples of such channels include regular monthly meetings, circulated meeting minutes, digital social networking services, and newsletters.

10. Make smart decisions

Decisions made by positive and encouraging communities focus primarily on the promotion of its vision and aims. When in doubt about decisions that must be made, positive leaders should consider whether any major decision is aligned with the community’s vision and aims. It is the members’ identification with a vision and aims that likely led them to join the community in the first place.

Members will inevitably disagree on some issues, but an effective community leader incorporates concerns from all sides of an issue to arrive at final decisions.

Creating a community and finding purpose – Stephen Thompson

People who work together in communities can achieve amazing things. Let these quotes serve as reminders of the drivers and benefits of positive communities.

As you read them, think about whether any resonate with you and the communities you are involved in.

The greatness of a community is most accurately measured by the compassionate actions of its members.

Coretta Scott King

Every successful individual knows that his or her achievement depends on a community of persons working together.

The power of community to create health is far greater than any physician, clinic or hospital.

Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing.

Empathy is the starting point for creating a community and taking action. It is the impetus for creating change.

17 Exercises for Positive, Fulfilling Relationships

Empower others with the skills to cultivate fulfilling, rewarding relationships and enhance their social wellbeing with these 17 Positive Relationships Exercises [PDF].

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According to Henrik Ibsen:

“A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm.”

Indeed, well-functioning, positive communities can motivate extraordinary commitment and dedication from their members, such that they will be willing to ‘take the helm’ when called upon.

At their core, positive communities generate this commitment because they are founded on a compelling and inspiring vision that members can identify with. Whether this vision is to eradicate world hunger or have the best Christmas lights display in the neighborhood, positive communities get members excited about interacting with one another and contributing.

Positive communities are also governed by effective leaders, who represent and execute the community’s values with fairness and genuine concern for their members.

We covered ten factors that can help make a community successful, but did we miss any? We’d love to hear from you in the comment section below.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Positive Relationships Exercises for free .

• Act-Belong-Commit. (n.d.). What is Act Belong Commit? Retrieved from https://www.actbelongcommit.org.au/about-us/what-is-act-belong-commit
• Bashshur, M. R., & Oc, B. (2015). When voice matters: A multilevel review of the impact of voice in organizations. Journal of Management , 41(5), 1530-1554.
• Butorova, H. (n.d.). The importance of: Fairness . Citywise. Retrieved from https://citywise.org/importance-fairness/
• Collins, R. (2004). Interaction ritual chains . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Ethics & Compliance Initiative. (n.d.). Developing an organizational code of conduct . Retrieved from https://www.ethics.org/resources/free-toolkit/code-of-conduct/
• Garrison, M. B., Marks, L. D., Lawrence, F. C., & Braun, B. (2005). Religious beliefs, faith community involvement and depression: A study of rural, low-income mothers. Women & Health , 40(3), 51-62.
• Greenberg, J., & Edwards, M. S. (2009). Voice and silence in organizations . Bigley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing.
• Kaner, S. (2014). Facilitator’s guide to participatory decision-making . San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons.
• Lambe, J., Cerezo, A., & O’Shaughnessy, T. (2017). Minority stress, community involvement, and mental health among bisexual women. Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity , 4(2), 218-226.
• Mah, A., & Carpenter, M. (2016). Community. Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology .
• MMO Populations. (n.d.). World of Warcraft . Retrieved from https://mmo-population.com/r/wow
• Ott, J. S. (1989). The organizational culture perspective . Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole).
• Perkins, L. (2015). 5 Key reasons people join communities . Social Media Week. Retrieved from https://socialmediaweek.org/blog/2015/01/5-key-reasons-people-join-communities/
• Smith, A. C., & Stewart, B. (2011). Organizational rituals: Features, functions and mechanisms. International Journal of Management Reviews , 13(2), 113-133.
• Whistleblowing Helpline. (2016). Raising concerns at work . Retrieved from https://www.norfolklscb.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Raising-Concerns-at-Work.pdf
• Wilkins, A. L. (1983). Organizational stories as symbols which control the organization. In L. R. Pondy, P. J. Frost, T. C. Dandridge, G. Morgan & S. B. Bacharach. (Eds.). Organizational symbolism . Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
• Young, E. (2017, January 19). How Iceland got teens to say no to drugs . The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/01/teens-drugs-iceland/513668/

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The Importance of Healthy Communities

The community’s health depends not only on the residents’ genetics but also on the environment in which the residents are located. As such, a person’s health is dependent on the environment in which they live. Hence, a healthy community can be described as one in which residents have access to aspects that promote healthy living, such as adequate health care, physical activity, nutrition, quality employment, transportation, education, and safe and comfortable homes. Unhealthy homes and communities can increase the chances of having chronic diseases such as heart diseases, cancer, and diabetes.

In today’s world, when chronic lifestyle diseases are on the rise as a result of unhealthy living caused by poorly planned communities, healthy communities are critical. Health communities are essential to the development of a region in which resources that would have been spent on preventing chronic diseases are instead used to improve sustainable communities (Lesorogol et al., 2019). Physical exercise is a known variant when it comes to maintaining a healthy living, thus, healthy communities encourage physical exercise in addition to growth. Physical activities are promoted by health professionals because they are important in preventing chronic diseases. Another important aspect of healthy communities is improved air quality. Many residents, particularly in urban regions, are exposed to harmful chemicals as a result of the numerous companies that exist there. These hazardous gases have a number of negative consequences that have a significant impact on the health of local residents. Fresh market food encourages a diet that is devoid of additives and preservatives. A healthy community relies on access to high-quality, low-cost healthcare. Quality health care is available to all residents in well-established communities.

Healthy communities are built in such a way that variables that influence healthy living are encouraged. As a result, various factors should be considered when developing such communities. Access to quality health care has been known to promote healthy communities. The Lincy Institute, 2021). It is critical to address the discrepancies in access to health care. Health care access is more difficult to get by in communities with lower per capita income. As a result, when creating regulations governing access to medical treatment, a community health system should address such considerations. Minimizing the expense of medical treatment, as well as building medical facilities and programs that promote access to high-quality care, are examples of such policies.

In addition to medical infrastructure, a health public policy should be implemented. The establishment of policies in non-health sectors, such as public transit, food policy, or rules guiding sustainable production, is referred to as public health policy. A well-managed health public policy aims to improve the population’s health. Because of the many elements that influence human health at the community level, public health policy is extremely significant. Transportation alternatives, neighborhood design, access to healthy food options, and recreation possibilities are all examples of things that happen in our communities.

Unsafe and substandard homes put persons at risk of ill health or accidents. Asthma is common among children who live in inadequate housing, according to studies. Poor ventilation, mildew from water leaks, and pest infestation are all factors that contribute to unhealthy dwellings (The Lincy Institute, 2021). Addressing the problem of dangerous housing in the neighborhood helps to create healthier communities. Investing in the community utilizing an asset-based strategy benefits both individuals and communities by concentrating on the individual’s or community’s skills, knowledge, and strengths. Traditional approaches have concentrated on flaws in the community approach that has not worked to address issues like obesity, poverty, and homelessness. As a result of this approach, specialists from outside the community have been brought in to deliver interventions. In contrast, the asset-based approach focuses on communities developing their own strengths, knowledge, and skills in order to form their own solutions.

The Lincy Institute. (2021). What is a Healthy Community? 

Lesorogol, C., Baumann, A. A., Eyler, A., Metzger, M. W., Reis, R. S., & Tabak, R. G. (2019). Building Healthy, Diverse, and Thriving Communities. Toward a Livable Life: A 21st Century Agenda for Social Work , 211. 

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How to Write the Community Essay – Guide with Examples (2023-24)

September 6, 2023

Students applying to college this year will inevitably confront the community essay. In fact, most students will end up responding to several community essay prompts for different schools. For this reason, you should know more than simply how to approach the community essay as a genre. Rather, you will want to learn how to decipher the nuances of each particular prompt, in order to adapt your response appropriately. In this article, we’ll show you how to do just that, through several community essay examples. These examples will also demonstrate how to avoid cliché and make the community essay authentically and convincingly your own.

Emphasis on Community

Do keep in mind that inherent in the word “community” is the idea of multiple people. The personal statement already provides you with a chance to tell the college admissions committee about yourself as an individual. The community essay, however, suggests that you depict yourself among others. You can use this opportunity to your advantage by showing off interpersonal skills, for example. Or, perhaps you wish to relate a moment that forged important relationships. This in turn will indicate what kind of connections you’ll make in the classroom with college peers and professors.

Apart from comprising numerous people, a community can appear in many shapes and sizes. It could be as small as a volleyball team, or as large as a diaspora. It could fill a town soup kitchen, or spread across five boroughs. In fact, due to the internet, certain communities today don’t even require a physical place to congregate. Communities can form around a shared identity, shared place, shared hobby, shared ideology, or shared call to action. They can even arise due to a shared yet unforeseen circumstance.

What is the Community Essay All About?             

In a nutshell, the community essay should exhibit three things:

• An aspect of yourself, 2. in the context of a community you belonged to, and 3. how this experience may shape your contribution to the community you’ll join in college.

It may look like a fairly simple equation: 1 + 2 = 3. However, each college will word their community essay prompt differently, so it’s important to look out for additional variables. One college may use the community essay as a way to glimpse your core values. Another may use the essay to understand how you would add to diversity on campus. Some may let you decide in which direction to take it—and there are many ways to go!

To get a better idea of how the prompts differ, let’s take a look at some real community essay prompts from the current admission cycle.

Sample 2023-2024 Community Essay Prompts

1) brown university.

“Students entering Brown often find that making their home on College Hill naturally invites reflection on where they came from. Share how an aspect of your growing up has inspired or challenged you, and what unique contributions this might allow you to make to the Brown community. (200-250 words)”

A close reading of this prompt shows that Brown puts particular emphasis on place. They do this by using the words “home,” “College Hill,” and “where they came from.” Thus, Brown invites writers to think about community through the prism of place. They also emphasize the idea of personal growth or change, through the words “inspired or challenged you.” Therefore, Brown wishes to see how the place you grew up in has affected you. And, they want to know how you in turn will affect their college community.

“NYU was founded on the belief that a student’s identity should not dictate the ability for them to access higher education. That sense of opportunity for all students, of all backgrounds, remains a part of who we are today and a critical part of what makes us a world-class university. Our community embraces diversity, in all its forms, as a cornerstone of the NYU experience.

We would like to better understand how your experiences would help us to shape and grow our diverse community. Please respond in 250 words or less.”

Here, NYU places an emphasis on students’ “identity,” “backgrounds,” and “diversity,” rather than any physical place. (For some students, place may be tied up in those ideas.) Furthermore, while NYU doesn’t ask specifically how identity has changed the essay writer, they do ask about your “experience.” Take this to mean that you can still recount a specific moment, or several moments, that work to portray your particular background. You should also try to link your story with NYU’s values of inclusivity and opportunity.

3) University of Washington

“Our families and communities often define us and our individual worlds. Community might refer to your cultural group, extended family, religious group, neighborhood or school, sports team or club, co-workers, etc. Describe the world you come from and how you, as a product of it, might add to the diversity of the UW. (300 words max) Tip: Keep in mind that the UW strives to create a community of students richly diverse in cultural backgrounds, experiences, values and viewpoints.”

UW ’s community essay prompt may look the most approachable, for they help define the idea of community. You’ll notice that most of their examples (“families,” “cultural group, extended family, religious group, neighborhood”…) place an emphasis on people. This may clue you in on their desire to see the relationships you’ve made. At the same time, UW uses the words “individual” and “richly diverse.” They, like NYU, wish to see how you fit in and stand out, in order to boost campus diversity.

Writing Your First Community Essay

Begin by picking which community essay you’ll write first. (For practical reasons, you’ll probably want to go with whichever one is due earliest.) Spend time doing a close reading of the prompt, as we’ve done above. Underline key words. Try to interpret exactly what the prompt is asking through these keywords.

Next, brainstorm. I recommend doing this on a blank piece of paper with a pencil. Across the top, make a row of headings. These might be the communities you’re a part of, or the components that make up your identity. Then, jot down descriptive words underneath in each column—whatever comes to you. These words may invoke people and experiences you had with them, feelings, moments of growth, lessons learned, values developed, etc. Now, narrow in on the idea that offers the richest material and that corresponds fully with the prompt.

Lastly, write! You’ll definitely want to describe real moments, in vivid detail. This will keep your essay original, and help you avoid cliché. However, you’ll need to summarize the experience and answer the prompt succinctly, so don’t stray too far into storytelling mode.

How To Adapt Your Community Essay

Once your first essay is complete, you’ll need to adapt it to the other colleges involving community essays on your list. Again, you’ll want to turn to the prompt for a close reading, and recognize what makes this prompt different from the last. For example, let’s say you’ve written your essay for UW about belonging to your swim team, and how the sports dynamics shaped you. Adapting that essay to Brown’s prompt could involve more of a focus on place. You may ask yourself, how was my swim team in Alaska different than the swim teams we competed against in other states?

Once you’ve adapted the content, you’ll also want to adapt the wording to mimic the prompt. For example, let’s say your UW essay states, “Thinking back to my years in the pool…” As you adapt this essay to Brown’s prompt, you may notice that Brown uses the word “reflection.” Therefore, you might change this sentence to “Reflecting back on my years in the pool…” While this change is minute, it cleverly signals to the reader that you’ve paid attention to the prompt, and are giving that school your full attention.

What to Avoid When Writing the Community Essay  

• Avoid cliché. Some students worry that their idea is cliché, or worse, that their background or identity is cliché. However, what makes an essay cliché is not the content, but the way the content is conveyed. This is where your voice and your descriptions become essential.
• Avoid giving too many examples. Stick to one community, and one or two anecdotes arising from that community that allow you to answer the prompt fully.
• Don’t exaggerate or twist facts. Sometimes students feel they must make themselves sound more “diverse” than they feel they are. Luckily, diversity is not a feeling. Likewise, diversity does not simply refer to one’s heritage. If the prompt is asking about your identity or background, you can show the originality of your experiences through your actions and your thinking.

Community Essay Examples and Analysis

Brown university community essay example.

I used to hate the NYC subway. I’ve taken it since I was six, going up and down Manhattan, to and from school. By high school, it was a daily nightmare. Spending so much time underground, underneath fluorescent lighting, squashed inside a rickety, rocking train car among strangers, some of whom wanted to talk about conspiracy theories, others who had bedbugs or B.O., or who manspread across two seats, or bickered—it wore me out. The challenge of going anywhere seemed absurd. I dreaded the claustrophobia and disgruntlement.

Yet the subway also inspired my understanding of community. I will never forget the morning I saw a man, several seats away, slide out of his seat and hit the floor. The thump shocked everyone to attention. What we noticed: he appeared drunk, possibly homeless. I was digesting this when a second man got up and, through a sort of awkward embrace, heaved the first man back into his seat. The rest of us had stuck to subway social codes: don’t step out of line. Yet this second man’s silent actions spoke loudly. They said, “I care.”

That day I realized I belong to a group of strangers. What holds us together is our transience, our vulnerabilities, and a willingness to assist. This community is not perfect but one in motion, a perpetual work-in-progress. Now I make it my aim to hold others up. I plan to contribute to the Brown community by helping fellow students and strangers in moments of precariousness.    

Brown University Community Essay Example Analysis

Here the student finds an original way to write about where they come from. The subway is not their home, yet it remains integral to ideas of belonging. The student shows how a community can be built between strangers, in their responsibility toward each other. The student succeeds at incorporating key words from the prompt (“challenge,” “inspired” “Brown community,” “contribute”) into their community essay.

UW Community Essay Example

I grew up in Hawaii, a world bound by water and rich in diversity. In school we learned that this sacred land was invaded, first by Captain Cook, then by missionaries, whalers, traders, plantation owners, and the U.S. government. My parents became part of this problematic takeover when they moved here in the 90s. The first community we knew was our church congregation. At the beginning of mass, we shook hands with our neighbors. We held hands again when we sang the Lord’s Prayer. I didn’t realize our church wasn’t “normal” until our diocese was informed that we had to stop dancing hula and singing Hawaiian hymns. The order came from the Pope himself.

Eventually, I lost faith in God and organized institutions. I thought the banning of hula—an ancient and pure form of expression—seemed medieval, ignorant, and unfair, given that the Hawaiian religion had already been stamped out. I felt a lack of community and a distrust for any place in which I might find one. As a postcolonial inhabitant, I could never belong to the Hawaiian culture, no matter how much I valued it. Then, I was shocked to learn that Queen Ka’ahumanu herself had eliminated the Kapu system, a strict code of conduct in which women were inferior to men. Next went the Hawaiian religion. Queen Ka’ahumanu burned all the temples before turning to Christianity, hoping this religion would offer better opportunities for her people.

Community Essay (Continued)

I’m not sure what to make of this history. Should I view Queen Ka’ahumanu as a feminist hero, or another failure in her islands’ tragedy? Nothing is black and white about her story, but she did what she thought was beneficial to her people, regardless of tradition. From her story, I’ve learned to accept complexity. I can disagree with institutionalized religion while still believing in my neighbors. I am a product of this place and their presence. At UW, I plan to add to campus diversity through my experience, knowing that diversity comes with contradictions and complications, all of which should be approached with an open and informed mind.

UW Community Essay Example Analysis

This student also manages to weave in words from the prompt (“family,” “community,” “world,” “product of it,” “add to the diversity,” etc.). Moreover, the student picks one of the examples of community mentioned in the prompt, (namely, a religious group,) and deepens their answer by addressing the complexity inherent in the community they’ve been involved in. While the student displays an inner turmoil about their identity and participation, they find a way to show how they’d contribute to an open-minded campus through their values and intellectual rigor.

What’s Next

For more on supplemental essays and essay writing guides, check out the following articles:

• How to Write the Why This Major Essay + Example
• How to Write the Overcoming Challenges Essay + Example
• How to Start a College Essay – 12 Techniques and Tips
• College Essay

Kaylen Baker

With a BA in Literary Studies from Middlebury College, an MFA in Fiction from Columbia University, and a Master’s in Translation from Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis, Kaylen has been working with students on their writing for over five years. Previously, Kaylen taught a fiction course for high school students as part of Columbia Artists/Teachers, and served as an English Language Assistant for the French National Department of Education. Kaylen is an experienced writer/translator whose work has been featured in Los Angeles Review, Hybrid, San Francisco Bay Guardian, France Today, and Honolulu Weekly, among others.

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• Defining Healthy Communities

Description

A healthy communities approach breaks down silos and allows us to think about health and community in the broadest of terms through a social determinants lens. In order for communities to effect positive sustainable changes, a paradigm shift will be required where process is valued as highly as outcomes and communities have autonomy to determine their notion of health by engaging in systematic and deliberate planning processes. Healthy communities and healthy community processes are mutually reinforcing. Strong community processes lead to improved community health. In turn, the vibrancy and health of the community further builds the capacity of the community to engage in healthy planning. For communities struggling to achieve health, the healthy communities process is a strong catalyst for change.

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What Makes the 'Good Community'?

What is it about your community that makes current and future residents and businesses want to locate, live, work and/or play there? Evidence suggests that businesses and residents place considerable importance on community characteristics that go far beyond simply a vibrant economy. Importantly for many communities, a strong social and aesthetic foundation is critically important to building a healthy and sustainable economy - and not necessarily the other way around.

While everyone is likely to answer the questions above a bit differently, research over the years suggests a number of commonalities in our preferences that are worth considering in our efforts to build strong and vibrant communities. Looking at your community through the lens of these considerations may well suggest strategies for strengthening your community's social, economic, and environmental well-being - and long-term success.

While there's a good bit of social science research that addresses one or more aspects of what we're looking for in the 'good community', two studies are particularly relevant.

Perhaps best known, David McMillan and David Chavis (1986), in their analysis of previous studies found that four factors consistently show up as community attributes we all look for in a good community.

• Membership - that feeling that part of us is invested in the community, that we have a right to belong and feel welcome
• Influence - that sense that we have some say in the community issues that affect us and that our perspectives are appreciated and respected
• Integration and fulfillment of needs - based on the notion that the community has numerous opportunities for both individual and social fulfillment including basic needs, recreation, and social interaction. Some scholars have referred to this as meeting the needs of the 'whole person' in all our roles, (e.g. goods, services, recreation, desirable social interaction activities, etc.)
• Shared emotional connection - based in part of shared history or sense of community and quality of interactions within the community

The second study comes from the Soul of the Community Project conducted in 26 communities across the nation by the Knight Foundation and Gallup (2010). The focus of this work was to look at those factors that facilitate "community attachment". In addition to highlighting individual factors, they found that those communities with the highest levels of community attachment also had the highest rates of growth in local gross domestic product.

The 5 community characteristics that most influenced community attachment (in order of importance) were: social offerings, openness, aesthetics, education, and basic services . While there were some differences in the relative strength of each of these factors across the 26 communities, these 5 factors consistently had the strongest influence on feelings of attachment. Other important, but somewhat less influential factors included leadership, economy, safety, social capital, and civic involvement .

Taken together, this and other research provides strong evidence for communities to pay close - and specific - attention to the social as well as economic conditions in their communities. While these are often related, the evidence suggests that businesses and residents are clearly looking for community characteristics that go far beyond simply a vibrant economy. Perhaps even more importantly, it seems clear that a strong social and aesthetic foundation is critically important to building a healthy and sustainable economy - and not necessarily the other way around. How would you assess your community on each of these characteristics? And what strategies can you put in place to begin strengthening this foundation?

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What Makes a Healthy Community?

See how your community measures up

We all want to live healthier lives but did you ever consider that your community plays a key role in your health and fitness? Some of the key components of healthy communities include access to parks, green spaces, recreational facilities and places to exercise like sports fields, swimming pools, golf courses and ice rinks. Building healthy communities is becoming a priority for cities, urban planners and others. The city of Vancouver has a formalized Healthy City Strategy and Calgary and Toronto have similar plans.

Improving the opportunity to cycle, walk, run or take public transit to work or school by changing the built environment is a growing area of research and could significantly influence your daily physical activity. Community design features, such as connected streets, a mix of residential, commercial, educational and employment areas, bike paths, and good public transit can support an active commute; whereas green spaces, waterways, walking paths, trails and recreation facilities can promote physical activity.

Exercise is one of the biggest determinants of health and where you live can have an influence on getting you out the door. With an aging population, staying active and healthy is more important than ever. The 2016 Canadian census showed that, for the first time, there are more adults over the age of 65 years than children under the age of 15.

According to a report on healthy living by Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, building communities that promote being active is important. Approximately 80 per cent of Canadians live in urban areas and the urban sprawl that surrounds most major cities is a big problem that has been linked to sedentary lifestyles, easy access to unhealthy food, more time spent driving, less physical activity and higher rates of obesity.

Studies have shown that people benefit from living near natural areas. The ability to visit a natural area close to home, promotes both healthy living patterns and also contributes to a reduction in stress. In fact, just looking out the window at trees, shrubs, grass, water and other natural features is a proven stress reducer.

City planners and urban developers recognize the importance of green spaces and this is being reflected in formal plans and policies. The Vancouver Healthy Cities Plan has a goal of having all Vancouver residents live within a five minute walk of a park. And, as of 2014, 92.7 per cent of residents lived within 400 metres of a park or green space.

Visiting a natural environment will provide you with a restorative effect that is soothing and calming. While nature lovers have long cited the positive effect of enjoying the outdoors, in the past few years, science has begun to actually measure these effects. Rigorous studies have proven that accessing a natural environment has a positive effect on blood pressure, immune functioning and performance on standardized neurocognitive tests.

Researcher Frances E. Kuo, Associate Professor at the University of Illinois, studies the connections between health and access to nature. She puts it this way:

“Access to nature, whether it is in the form of bona fide natural areas or in bits or views of nature, impacts psychological, as well as social functioning. Greater access to green views and green environments yields better cognitive functioning; more proactive, more effective patterns of life functioning; more self-discipline and more impulse control; greater mental health overall; and greater resilience in response to stressful life events.”

“Less access to nature is linked to exacerbated attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms, more sadness and higher rates of clinical depression. People with less access to nature are more prone to stress and anxiety…”

It is clear that communities with nearby natural areas such as river valleys, grasslands, lakes or even mountains hold a healthy advantage for their residents.

Living close to city parks is also a contributing factor to a healthy community. Parks provide a place for neighbours to congregate and make social connections, an important determinant of wellness. They also promote physical activity in many forms. Playgrounds with swings, climbing equipment and slides encourage children to be active, develop social skills as they meet other kids and gain confidence in their physical abilities. And, with parents watching from the sidelines, social interaction is a possible outcome.

Playgrounds aren’t just for kids anymore. A number of communities in Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver and other cities worldwide, have created outdoor fitness parks. These facilities are provided by local municipalities and are free to anyone. The first generation offered static elements like logs to balance on and bars for pull ups. But they have progressed to more sophisticated equipment that focus on strength, cardio and balance.

A study commissioned by the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association concluded that residents living near outdoor fitness parks felt they “improve health, increase physical activity, and enhance a sense of community in their neighbourhood. Many also appreciated that it was freely accessible.”

According to Marie Beha and Caroline F. Hansen on the blog Sharing.Lab “The rationale for government-funded outdoor gyms has its roots in The Nudge Theory. The main idea behind this concept is that subtle changes in government policy can incentivize people to do things, which are in their own interest, without actually giving them direct orders to do so.”

Another feature of a healthy community is access to pathways which encourage residents to walk, run and cycle. Calgary, Toronto and Vancouver all have extensive cycle networks with designated routes linking outlying communities with the downtown core. Many of these are plowed and sanded in the winter, giving rise to a growing population of hardy, year round commuters. Communities that are situated on or near these networks give residents easy access to cycling for pleasure or commuting purposes, providing a healthy and pollution-free method of getting from one location to another.

The number of Canadians on foot and cycling is increasing. In Vancouver a 2016 survey by the city showed increasing numbers of pedestrians and cyclists with 27 per cent of all trips made on foot and seven per cent made by bike. People are also on the move in Toronto where the number of pedestrians and cyclists is growing. Cycle Toronto reports as many as 34 per cent of all trips are made on bike in some neighbourhoods, mainly mixed-use residential communities close to downtown, with a city-wide increase of 15 to 20 per cent over a decade. Calgary too is reporting an increase in the number of its pathway users. Data was last collected by the city in 2016 over a period of several months with totals as high as 75,957 pedestrian, 34 wheelchair and mobility scooter users, and 29,030 cyclists counted at 90 locations over one six-hour period.

Aside from the obvious health benefits of walking, running and cycling, these forms of transportation contribute to a cleaner environment with no emissions. That in turn encourages more people to get out into the environment.

Whether your community has sidewalks is something that you may overlook but it has an impact on active living. Walking along the side of the road just isn’t an attractive option for people who want to walk. It’s not safe or aesthetically pleasing to amble along the edge of a road with cars speeding by. Neighbourhoods with sidewalks have much more appeal and will have an influence on whether you decide to walk.

And there are a lot of fringe benefits to living in a community with sidewalks. Real Estate studies have shown that communities with sidewalks are more desirable and people are willing to pay more to live there. Sidewalks help improve access to local services and transportation and even help keep crime down by encouraging people to be out and about in the community.

Even the design of front yards can have an influence on the health of the community. Yards where people have flowerbeds and lawns require them to go outside even if it’s just to cut the lawn. This creates a connection with nature which helps with overall mental health. In addition, it gives them an opportunity to socialize with neighbours and pedestrians going by.

So the next time you head out into your neighbourhood, take a look at how it stacks up in terms of health and fitness. If it ticks all the right boxes, you’ve scored a win in community health.

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How to Write the “Community” and “Issue” Yale Essays

This article was written based on the information and opinions presented by Hale Jaeger in a CollegeVine livestream. You can watch the full livestream for more info. 

What’s Covered

The “community” essay: choosing a community, structuring the “community” essay, the “issue” essay: choosing your issue, issues to avoid, structuring the “issue” essay.

In this article, we discuss strategies for writing Yale University ’s “Community” and “Issue” supplemental essays. Applicants using the Common App or Coalition Application to apply to Yale are required to choose one of these two prompts and respond to it in 400 words or fewer. The first prompt is the “Issue” essay prompt, which reads:

Yale carries out its mission “through the free exchange of ideas in an ethical, interdependent, and diverse community.” Reflect on a time when you exchanged ideas about an important issue with someone holding an opposing view. How did the experience lead you either to change your opinion or to sharpen your reasons for holding onto it? (400 words)

The second prompt is the “Community” essay prompt:

Reflect on a time when you have worked to enhance a community to which you feel connected. Why have these efforts been meaningful to you? You may define community however you like. (400 words)

In this article, we discuss choosing topics for each of these essays and strategies to structure them.

The Yale “Community” essay prompt clearly states that you can define community however you wish, which means you can choose to write about any kind of community that you feel you are a member of. When considering potential communities, start by brainstorming any groups you are part of that have defined boundaries, such as your town, school, team, or religious organization.

There are also informal communities that you could choose from, such as your friend group, family, coworkers, or neighborhood. Even though these groups have less of a formal definition, they are still communities. What matters most is that the community that you choose is important to you, that you have contributed to it, and that you have learned something from it.

When structuring this essay, think about it in three sections. The first introduces the community, the second demonstrates your contributions to the community, and the third explains what the community has given and taught you. As you write, keep in mind that this essay is a two-way street; you want to show what you have given to your community and what it has given you.

Introduce the Community

The first step in writing this essay is to introduce the community. Explain who is part of the community and what the community is like. Highlight the community’s structure by demonstrating how you are part of it and how you interact with your peers, superiors, or inferiors within the group. It is also important to depict the community’s dynamic in this part of the essay. For example, is it fun, relaxed, and loving, or is it rigorous, challenging, and thought provoking? 

Show What You’ve Contributed

The next section of this essay should discuss your engagement with this community and what you’ve contributed to it. Consider what you’ve done, what initiatives you’ve brought to the community, and what your role is within it. You can also highlight anything that you had to give up to be part of the community.

Show What You’ve Learned

The last part of this essay should discuss what you have gained and learned from this community. For this portion, consider things that the community has given and taught you, as well as ways that it has helped you grow. Think about how this community has shaped who you are and who you are becoming.

The other prompt option is the “Issue” essay. The first step for this one is to define what your issue is. It doesn’t matter what you choose, as long as it’s something that has enough nuance for you to talk about it in a complex and intelligent way.

Make sure it’s an issue of some relevance to you; otherwise, it will come across as dispassionate. As you write this essay, you should show that you are somebody who cares about an issue that they think is significant. 

Grand Issues

When selecting an issue, you can either choose a grand one or a local one. Grand issues are big, unsolved problems that are common in society, such as cancer, homelessness, or food insecurity. If you do choose a grand issue, remind yourself of its personal importance. While grand issues are full of nuance, they may lack personal meaning. Examples of personal connections to grand issues could be if you have encountered homelessness, lived with food insecurity, or have lost someone to cancer.

Local Issues

Another topic option is to write about an issue that is local. For example, maybe your high school has a teaching staff that doesn’t represent the diversity of the student body. While this is not a global issue, it’s something that strongly affects you and your community. 

Perhaps you live in a town that is directly suffering from the opioid crisis, or you have divorced parents and have started an activist group for children of divorced parents. Both of these examples of local issues also have personal importance. 

When choosing a topic to write about, avoid issues that you don’t have any connection to and that aren’t personally important. These are often problems that are too grand and can’t be made personal, such as world peace. 

Another category of issues to avoid is anything that doesn’t align with Yale’s values. Yale, like most universities in the United States, generally has a liberal lean. As such, it is likely not in your best interest to write a strong defense of socially conservative values. While there are values that you are free to hold and express—and Yale welcomes people of all backgrounds and ideologies—this essay is not necessarily the best place to express them.

You are most likely applying to Yale because it’s a place that you want to be and have something in common with. This essay is a great opportunity to emphasize the values that you share with the university rather than the things that divide you. Since a reader only has five to seven minutes to go over your entire application, you don’t want them to come away with the sense that you are somebody who won’t thrive at Yale.

Define the Issue and Highlight Past Experiences

When writing the “Issue” essay, start by identifying the issue and sharing how you came across it. Then, provide insight into why it is meaningful to you and your relationship with it.

Next, show the reader how you have already engaged with the problem by detailing your past with the issue. 

Discuss Future Plans to Approach the Issue

After this, you can look forward and discuss your future with this issue. A great strategy is to write about how your Yale education will address the problem and how your field of study relates to it. You can also highlight any Yale-specific programs or opportunities that will give you insight or context for tackling the issue. 

Alternatively, if there is something about this issue that Yale’s academic flexibility will enable you to explore, you can share that in this part of the essay. For example, maybe you are interested in health policy and plan to take classes in the sciences. You also want to take classes in the history of health, science, and medicine, as well as political science and economics courses, which you plan to utilize to write new healthcare policies.

Another option is to focus on an aspect of Yale’s community, such as peers, professors, or mentors who will help develop your ability to navigate the issue. Ultimately, you want to demonstrate in this essay that what (and how) you learn at Yale will prepare you to take action and move forward with confronting your issue in the future.

Related CollegeVine Blog Posts

Why Community Health Is Important for Public Health

A young first-time mother receives at-home nurse visits as part of a community outreach program. A weekly clinic targeting high diabetes rates helps a struggling man with diabetes gain nutritional control and reduce symptoms. These success stories illustrate how improving the quality of life in communities is an essential part of public health.

A public health worker’s goal in community-focused care is to enhance healthcare services and patient outcomes in targeted populations. By applying public health theory on a local, personalized level, community health providers can cater services to a specific demographic and support wellness in communities that might otherwise lack access to care.

Community health programs address disparities by ensuring equitable access to health resources. Such disparities include living in an isolated rural area with limited healthcare providers or being unable to afford health insurance. Community health centers can serve as primary care providers in communities where socioeconomic factors limit health equity.

Individuals with a public health education who want to apply those principles to address a local population’s needs must understand the area’s unique characteristics. This allows them to interact dynamically with community members and create a lasting positive impact on the population. Exploring why community health is important for public health fosters a holistic understanding of how one influences the other and the impact of community-level efforts. 

What Is Community Health?

Community health is the collective well-being of community members. In addition to living in the same neighborhood or region, some populations may share health characteristics, ethnicities, and socioeconomic conditions.

For instance, some low-income communities might experience high obesity rates due to the limited availability of nutritious foods in local grocery stores. Areas such as these are commonly known as food deserts.

As another example, a population might be exposed to contaminants from a nearby plant or waste facility, which may lead to similar health outcomes in a certain community. 

Community health programs improve access to preventive healthcare services, engage citizens in care decisions, and seek lower medical costs. 

Community Health Elements

Public health professionals engaged in community health identify how variables related to socioeconomic status — such as income levels, nutrition, crime, and transportation resources — impact people. They also determine how the community’s medical and educational resources contribute to residents’ lifestyles and what improvements are called for. Key elements of community health include:

• Identifying top public health concerns within the specific geographic area, such as environmental and social factors that affect healthy life choices.
• Developing an intervention plan to address resource gaps in the community, such as establishing community health centers, mobile clinics, and outreach programs.
• Educating residents on the benefits of preventive care and healthy behaviors to facilitate life changes.
• Providing essential services such as health screenings, social support, and counseling.
• Helping residents gain access to resources such as affordable medical, dental, and mental healthcare services; insurance (Medicare or Medicaid enrollment); translation and transportation services; or housing, food, and education.
• Reducing the need for expensive emergency care and hospitalizations.
• Advocating for improved care for at-risk populations to state and federal policymakers.
• Working with other community agencies to address the area’s mental, physical, cultural, and social characteristics, including nutrition, housing, and transportation. 

Community Health Goals

The goal of a community health provider is to offer comprehensive services that grant communities direct and immediate access to essential resources, including medical, dental, pharmaceutical, and mental health care. By educating area residents on what resources are available and providing the tools to access care, public health leaders empower people to take control of their own health.

Community public health initiatives focus on identifying specific geographic areas with high levels of need and helping those communities overcome barriers to living healthier lives. Community members’ average lifespans are heavily influenced by the inequities that restrict access to healthy food, affordable health care, education, employment opportunities, and mental health support, according to KFF.

Community health professionals form strong bonds with citizens, as well as area healthcare and social services providers. This enables them to complete essential tasks, such as uncovering regional health risks, educating residents on healthy behaviors, or establishing community health resources to close gaps in care.

Community health differs from the similar concept of population health management, which considers a population’s health outcomes based on a wider range of factors beyond just geography. Hospitals use population health management tactics to improve chronic disease management or to avoid readmissions. 

Advance Your Public Health Career with an MPH

Pursue your degree online from tulane university, why community health is important.

Approximately six out of every ten Americans suffer from a chronic health condition, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Many do not get proper care due to socioeconomic factors beyond their control. An older diabetic patient without a driver’s license and no family nearby, a pregnant woman with toxemia living more than 50 miles from a hospital — both are at high risk in a medical emergency. Reducing the risk of potentially fatal healthcare scenarios is why community health is important. However, accomplishing this requires a multifaceted approach. 

Addressing Health Disparities

Healthcare disparities can be especially prevalent in rural and low-income communities where hospitals have closed down and physician shortages exist. These populations may be exposed to higher levels of poverty, homelessness, substance misuse, and other risk factors. When a community health system created to address unmet needs takes account of the community’s unique characteristics, the community’s overall quality of care can be vastly improved.

The Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA) is doing its part to address some of the major health disparities that have been plaguing the nation. According to the HRSA’s most recent health equity fact sheet, they have:

• Delivered primary care services to over 30 million residents living in underserved or rural communities.
• Increased how many children are served through HRSA-funded health centers with school-based service sites by 24 percent in the past two years.
• Achieved viral suppression in approximately 90 percent of HIV patients who received treatment through the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program.
• Helped launch over 100 new, community-based Healthy Start projects.
• Supported the training and education of approximately 7,200 substance use disorder care providers and 7,000 behavioral health providers.
• Provided loan repayments and scholarships to approximately 22,000 clinicians for practicing in underserved communities.

Lowering Healthcare Costs

Community health is an important element of health reform efforts that aim to lower national healthcare expenses. The cost of health care in the U.S. in 2022 represented 16.6 percent of GDP, a much higher percentage than Germany, Canada, France, and Japan, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development. About one-third of this spending goes toward hospital care, so costs might drop if the U.S. model of care shifts toward more affordable outpatient care facilities such as community health clinics.

Community health providers operate under a patient-centered care model, involving patients in care decisions. This model allows providers to steer patients away from costly trips to the emergency room and help them avoid relapses. 

Enacting Public Health Initiatives

Community health resources have become essential assets in public health initiatives such as combating the opioid crisis and stemming the HIV epidemic. Opioid deaths and drug-related overdoses in the U.S. are responsible for approximately 106,000 fatalities, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and community health centers are on the front line of federal efforts to reduce preventable drug overdose deaths.

These clinics are also working to decrease the estimated 56,000 new HIV infections that occur in the U.S. each year. The holistic model of community care allows practitioners to treat and prevent a multitude of conditions simultaneously. 

Community Health vs. Public Health

Community health and public health are often used interchangeably in discussions about health care, but they represent distinct concepts with different focuses, scopes, and methods. Both public and community health are important because they play crucial roles in the overall well-being of societies. However, their approaches and implementations can vary significantly.

Community health focuses on specific geographic areas or populations. It emphasizes the health outcomes and needs of these particular groups, addressing issues that are directly impactful at a local level. Public health, on the other hand, deals with the health and well-being of the entire population at the national or global level. Public health professionals work on a broader spectrum, dealing with aspects such as policy-making, disease prevention, education, and epidemic control that affect large populations. 

Further differentiating community health and public health are the methods and strategies employed. Community health often involves direct interaction with community members. This can include health education sessions, local health screenings, and partnerships with local organizations to deliver services that are tailored to the community and improve health outcomes. 

In contrast, public health uses a more analytical and policy-oriented approach. Public health professionals analyze data on health trends and disease outbreaks to develop strategies that prevent and control diseases on a wide scale. They often advocate for public health laws, regulations, and policies that govern everything from environmental health and safety standards to managing communicable diseases.

Community Health Services and Resources

Community health services providers want to change the model of care from treating illness to maintaining wellness. This challenge is addressed by comprehensively tackling patients’ well-being and not just band-aiding ailments that will soon resurface without proper preventive and maintenance care. Essentially, it is a shift from reactive treatment to proactive healthcare management. 

By combining medical, oral health, mental health, substance misuse, and pharmacy care with support services including health education, transportation to appointments, and bilingual staff, community health resource providers make sure that access to care is not restricted by geographic, economic, or cultural barriers, according to the HRSA. 

Community Health Centers

Federally funded community health centers (CHCs) provide affordable healthcare options to more than 30 million people in the U.S., according to the HRSA. The clinics are designed to improve access to primary care services regardless of whether patients have insurance, speak languages other than English, or live in remote areas.

These centers often target groups facing health disparities and limited care resources, including patients living in poverty, rural residents, veterans, and people experiencing homelessness. Clinics typically use a sliding scale for fees and provide care even when patients cannot pay.

Typical services include:

• Preventive and primary care services (including medical and dental checkups and chronic condition management)
• Disease prevention (vaccinations, anti-smoking programs, and obesity screenings)
• Patient education (nutritional counseling, injury prevention, and disease information)
• Mental health services (screenings and counseling)
• Substance misuse treatment

By providing comprehensive preventive care and helping patients monitor chronic conditions, CHCs serve to lower medical costs by reducing expensive emergency department visits and hospital stays. Many of these clinics operate as patient-centered medical homes (PCMHs). According to the National Association of Community Health Centers, the 14,000 Community Health Center sites in the United States serve approximately 30 million patients and generate nearly $85 billion in economic output.

Most CHCs receive federal grant funding under the Health Center Program, which aims to improve health care for vulnerable populations. Many CHCs also receive funding and operational support from state agencies and nonprofit charitable organizations. 

Public Outreach Programs

Public outreach campaigns include direct medical care programs along with educational materials, advertisements, and social media posts that encourage healthy lifestyles. Some organizations operate mobile and pop-up clinics that offer disease prevention programs within the community. To extend public education into all aspects of the community, health workers will often partner with local political systems, social work agencies, and schools. 

Community Mental Health Centers

Community health centers provide frontline services in the behavioral health arena. The demand for behavioral health-focused community clinics is strong. Substance misuse treatment centers are also being established at a growing rate as many regions across the nation struggle to reduce overdose deaths.

A Medicare-designated community mental health center is defined as providing screening, outpatient therapy, rehabilitation, day treatment, and 24-hour emergency services to chronically ill patients or those recently discharged from inpatient care. States also oversee mental health resources. 

Careers in Community Health

Public and community health workers are engaged in a broad scope of activities, including research, education, program development, program management, medical care, and charitable aid. Roles can range from leadership positions to frontline caregivers, underscoring the importance of community health initiatives at every level. Professionals seeking careers in community health might work in medical, educational, government, corporate, or nonprofit settings. 

Community Health Worker

A community health worker is defined by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) as someone who assists communities and individuals in adopting healthy behaviors. Job duties include outreach on behalf of medical organizations and implementing community health programs. Community health workers are also involved in basic medical screenings or care; informal counseling; research; and health education and advocacy.

Community health professionals serve as a bridge between community members and medical and social service providers and often live in the community. To promote healthy behaviors, a community health worker helps people get better access to medical resources as well as transportation, housing, and nutrition.

Additionally, a community health worker develops cultural sensitivity and establishes relationships with local residents to establish bonds of trust. Such workers also need to balance activities in client advocacy, public education, and medical service provision.

Program Director

The program director or clinical director of a community health program or community health center takes overall responsibility for the organization’s goals and accomplishments. A director improves access to care in the community, identifying and filling gaps in care services, and reducing emergency medical care through preventive measures.

Skills that foster establishing rapport with community members are especially important for program directors. Program directors must have strong leadership, communication, and management skills, in addition to a foundation in public health advocacy. 

Research Analyst

A researcher career in the community health field entails gathering information about health issues and risks for specific geographic areas or populations. Researchers collect essential information on socioeconomic conditions, health disparities, and community health resources’ effectiveness through data evaluation and direct interaction with local residents.

A researcher might investigate environmental hazards, infectious disease risks, or other regional threats. Community research analysts provide statistical reports and environmental evaluations to help administrators create innovative health advocacy and improvement programs. 

Medical Professional

An education or early career in community health sciences can form a solid foundation for a career in medicine as a physician, psychiatrist, or nurse practitioner, and might even lead the health professional to practice in an at-risk geographic area. A community health worker might also go on to become a hospital administrator or government health official.

How to Improve Community Health

Improving community health is a multifaceted endeavor that requires collaboration, tailored interventions, and sustained efforts over time. Successful strategies involve a combination of health promotion, disease prevention, and community engagement, along with improvements in economic, social, and environmental conditions. Specific tactics to improve community health include:

• Engaging with community members through public forums, surveys, and community meetings so that a healthy dialogue is established and they have easy access to essential healthcare information.
• Improving community access to essential healthcare services, including hospitals, clinics, mobile health clinics, and telemedicine services.
• Promoting the importance and effectiveness of preventative healthcare strategies using nutrition education, physical activity initiatives, and programs that help community members stop smoking and curb addiction issues.
• Directly addressing the social, economic, and environmental factors that challenge community health with innovative solutions and programs.
• Building key partnerships with healthcare providers, businesses, schools, religious organizations, and other community groups to collectively tackle health issues as a team. 

Earn a Master of Public Health Degree and Help Communities Grow

Establishing public health programs that cater to targeted populations enables public health professionals to improve the quality of care for all communities. To develop effective community health programs, professionals must develop strong competencies in evaluating health environments, understanding local cultures, identifying disparities, strategizing interventions, and creating trusting relationships with local residents and officials. Such skills require a high level of dedication and tenacity.

Pursuing an Online Master of Public Health (MPH) degree from Tulane University’s School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine emboldens students to apply transformative health equity principles and innovative solution-building skills to empower communities in need. MPH students often gain a passion for equality and the drive to enact change for vulnerable populations. 

By covering topics including physical health, mental health, disease management, leadership, and social justice, the MPH program enables graduates to holistically understand why community health is important so they are equipped to cultivate healthier communities around the globe. 

Recommended Readings :

Community-Based Participatory Research in Public Health

Health Disparities and Health Inequities: Impact and Advocacy

Mental Health Advocacy and Its Importance in Public Health

American Hospital Association, What Is Community Health?

American Progress, “Top 10 Ways To Improve Health and Health Equity”

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC’s HIV Prevention Progress in the United States

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Chronic Disease

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Community Health Assessments & Health Improvement Plans

Elevance Health, “What Are the Differences Between Population Health, Public Health, and Community Health?”

Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA), Health Resources and Services Administration

Health Equity Fact Sheet

Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA), Impact of the Health Center Program

HIV.gov, U.S. Statistics

KFF, “What is Driving Widening Racial Disparities in Life Expectancy?”

Louisiana Department of Health, Community Mental Health Center

Louisiana Department of Health, Office of Behavioral Health – Mental Health Services

Mental Health America, The State Of Mental Health In America

National Association of Community Health Centers, Economic Impact of Community

Health Centers in the United States

National Association of Community Health Centers, “What Is a Community Health Center?”

National Institute on Drug Abuse, Drug Overdose Death Rates

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, OECD Health Statistics 2023

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Health Education Specialists

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wages, May 2023 21-1094 Community Health Workers

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What Is Community Health and Why Is It Important?

By Ashley Brooks on 03/04/2019

The community you live in is part of who you are. Even if you don’t see your neighbors every day, you recognize that the decisions you make impact those around you. You’re all in it together, and you wouldn’t have it any other way!

Improving your community and helping others is often at the top of your mind. So when the phrase “community health” crossed your radar, you had to know more. What is community health? And how does it affect the lives of those in your area?

Community health is the intersection of healthcare, economics and social interaction. Unfortunately, many people are unaware of the role this type of healthcare plays in their everyday lives. Join us as we explore the impact of community health on your neighborhood—and what you can do to improve it.

What is community health?

Community health is a medical specialty that focuses on the physical and mental well-being of the people in a specific geographic region. This important subsection of public health includes initiatives to help community members maintain and improve their health, prevent the spread of infectious diseases and prepare for natural disasters.

“Working at the community level promotes healthy living, helps prevent chronic diseases and brings the greatest health benefits to the greatest number of people in need,” reports the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) . 1

Strong community health requires residents to look beyond themselves and take “collective responsibility,” says Caleb Backe, health and wellness expert at Maple Holistics . “It’s not just about the healthcare system, but focuses on the importance of leading a generally healthy lifestyle in order to protect the community as a whole.”

Community health is inextricably tied to individual wellness. “Good community health equates to healthy people, as a community is the ecosystem or environment in which people live,” says Thomas G. Bognanno, president and CEO of Community Health Charities . “It’s difficult to be healthy personally if your community is unhealthy.”

The far-reaching impact of community health

Community health flips the script on the old adage, “You take care of you; I’ll take care of me.” Instead, public health experts agree that the health of a community can have far-reaching—and sometimes surprising—impacts on individual health and beyond.

“Community health impacts everything—educational achievement, safety and crime, people’s ability to work and be financially healthy, life expectancy, happiness and more,” Bognanno says. “Health impacts every other facet of life, from a child’s ability to learn to an adult’s ability to work, so health is critical for education and financial well-being.”

The effect of health on quality of life can also impact the desire to participate in civic duties like voting, social functions and leisure activities, according to Healthy People 2020 , an initiative of the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. 2

Communities that are attentive to public health can even reduce inequality among their residents. “[Community health] also helps to reduce health gaps caused by differences in race and ethnicity, location, social status, income and other factors that can affect health,” reports the CDC . 1

The consequences of neglecting community health

A lack of focus on community health can lead to a range of complex problems that aren’t easy to correct. For example, crime and safety issues that result from neglected community health can quickly becoming a self-perpetuating cycle. “Repeated exposure to crime and violence may be linked to an increase in negative health outcomes. Children exposed to violence may show increased signs of aggression starting in upper-elementary school,” reports Healthy People 2020 . 2

Chronic diseases, such as diabetes and heart disease, can also increase if a community’s overall well-being is suffering. “An unhealthy community tends to be obese and struggle more from chronic diseases and other health challenges,” Bognanno says.

Chronic diseases like these not only reduce life expectancy, they have a dramatic effect on the economy. The CDC reports that 90 percent of the nation’s annual healthcare expenses are for people with chronic health conditions. 3

Curbing the spread of infectious disease is also a priority of community health programs. Without them, communities may find themselves battling outbreaks of illnesses that put vulnerable populations like the elderly at higher risk.

“If a community has to recover from an emergency event, such as a natural disaster, reducing the spread of disease becomes a crucial part of the recovery process,” Backe says.

Factors that improve community health

Improving community health is a huge undertaking that involves cooperation between public health workers, local government, volunteers and average citizens alike—and the end products of their work can take a lot of forms. “Communities benefit from walking trails and bike paths, from access to healthy food and playgrounds, from accessible healthcare services, schools and places of employment, as well as affordable housing,” Bognanno says.

Education also plays a large role in maintaining community health. Health fairs and advertising campaigns that expose the dangers of risk factors like tobacco exposure, poor nutrition and physical inactivity can raise awareness about the importance of choosing a healthy lifestyle. The CDC has also focused on promoting nutrition guidelines in schools and increasing the amount of physical education children receive. 4

Individuals can step up to the plate for their community’s health by volunteering at health fairs or blood drives, petitioning local officials to develop more green space and walking trails and maintaining their own health. “The collective responsibilities that individuals have for their communal health can lead to positive interactions within the community as a whole,” Backe says.

Take a stand for community health

What is community health? Now you know that it’s a vital component of public health—and it’s something every individual can play a part in improving. To learn more about how public health workers are improving the health of people across the nation, take a look at these articles, “ 6 Invaluable Ways Community Health Workers Improve Our Lives .” and " What Can You Do With a Health & Wellness Degree?"

Related Articles:

• 6 Examples of Positive Workplace Health Practices

1 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Chronic Disease: A Significant Public Health Threat, [information accessed January 29, 2019] https://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dch/about/index.htm 2 Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health-Related Quality of Life and Well-Being, [information accessed January 29, 2019] https://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/about/foundation-health-measures/Health-Related-Quality-of-Life-and-Well-Being 3 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Health and Economic Costs of Chronic Diseases, [information accessed January 29, 2019] https://www.cdc.gov/chronicdisease/about/costs/index.htm 4 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Partnerships to Improve Community Health, [information accessed January 29, 2019] https://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dch/programs/partnershipstoimprovecommunityhealth/index.html

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Ashley Brooks

Ashley is a freelance writer for Collegis education who writes student-focused articles on behalf of Rasmussen University. She believes in the power of words and knowledge and enjoys using both to encourage others on their learning journeys

Posted in Health and Wellness

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Chapter 2 Sections

• Section 1. Developing a Logic Model or Theory of Change
• Section 2. PRECEDE/PROCEED
• Section 4. Asset Development
• Section 5. Collective Impact
• Section 6. The Institute of Medicine's Community Health Improvement Process (CHIP)
• Section 7. Ten Essential Public Health Services
• Section 8. Communities That Care
• Section 9. Community Readiness
• Section 10. The Strategic Prevention Framework
• Section 11. Health Impact Assessment
• Section 12. Documenting Health Promotion Initiatives Using the PAHO Guide
• Section 13. MAPP: Mobilizing for Action through Planning and Partnerships
• Section 14. MAP-IT: A Model for Implementing Healthy People 2020
• Section 15. The County Health Rankings & Roadmaps Take Action Cycle
• Section 16. Building Compassionate Communities
• Section 17. Addressing Social Determinants of Health in Your Community
• Section 18. PACE EH: Protocol for Assessing Community Excellence in Environmental Health

• Main Section

What is Healthy Cities/Healthy Communities?

Why use healthy cities/healthy communities, who should participate in healthy cities/healthy communities, how do you use healthy cities/healthy communities.

In this video, Tyler Norris, Vice President of Kaiser Permanente Center for Total Health, discusses the meaning and impacts of community health. "What is a healthy community? What is healthy, and what is a community?" He asks. In this section, we will explore the concepts of defining, creating, and promoting healthy communities.

Healthy Cities/Healthy Communities is a theoretical framework for a participatory process by which citizens can create healthy communities. In 1985, at a conference in Toronto organized by Trevor Hancock, Len Duhl spoke about his long-held conviction that health issues could only be effectively addressed through an inclusive, community-wide approach. Ilona Kickbusch, a World Health Organization (WHO) official who was attending the conference, brought the idea back to her superiors at the WHO European office in Copenhagen. Within a matter of weeks, Duhl and Hancock had been hired as consultants to help WHO and Kickbusch start a Healthy Cities movement in Europe. A year later, the attendees of a WHO conference in Ottawa drafted the Ottawa Charter, the “Constitution” of Healthy Cities/Healthy Communities. In the years since that first conference, the concept has spread to hundreds of large and medium-sized cities on all continents, and has also been used in smaller municipalities and rural communities in both the developing and the developed world. It is now the standard way in which the WHO addresses community health, and it encompasses other community issues as well.

A healthy community, as we discussed above, is one in which all systems work well (and work together), and in which all citizens enjoy a good quality of life. This means that the health of the community is affected by the social determinants of health and development – the factors that influence individual and community health and development.

So, what does the Healthy Cities/Healthy Communities model look like? Unlike PRECEDE/PROCEED , it has no flow chart or diagram, largely because its process may be totally different in different communities.It’s a loosely-defined strategy that asks citizens and officials to make becoming a healthy community a priority, and to pursue that end by involving all community members in identifying and addressing the issues most important to them.

We have created an informal logic model in order to connect you to your Community Tool Box resources that can support your effort to implement Healthy Cities/Healthy Communities.

Healthy Cities/Healthy Communities rests on two basic premises :

A comprehensive view of health . As we’ve been discussing, a comprehensive view of health takes in all the elements of a community’s life, since they affect both individual health and the health of the community itself. The Ottawa Charter lays out the prerequisites for health in communities:

Peace . This can be interpreted to cover both freedom from warfare, and freedom from fear of physical harm.

During the Vietnam War, young black men on the streets of their home neighborhoods in the U.S. were statistically more likely to be killed by gunfire than were young black soldiers in combat. Those home neighborhoods weren’t at peace, by anyone’s definition.

Shelter. Shelter adequate to the climate, to the needs of the occupants, and to withstand extremes of weather.

Education. Education for children (and often adults as well, as in the case of adult literacy) that is free, adequate to equip them for a productive and comfortable life in their society, and available and accessible to all.

Food . Not just food, but enough of it, and of adequate nutritional value, to assure continued health and vigor for adults, and proper development for children.

Income. Employment that provides an income adequate for a reasonable quality of life, and public support for those who are unable to work or find jobs.

A stable ecosystem . Clean air, clean water, and protection of the natural environment.

Sustainable resources . These might include water, farmland, minerals, industrial resources, power sources (sun, wind, water, biomass), plants, animals, etc.

Social justice . Where there is social justice, no one is mistreated or exploited by those more powerful. No one is discriminated against. No one suffers needlessly because she’s poor or ill or disabled. All are treated equally and fairly under the law, and everyone has a voice in how the community and the society are run.

Equity . Equity is not exactly the same thing as equality. It doesn’t mean that everyone gets the same things, but that everyone gets, or has access to, what he needs.

If all of these factors are considered, then health must extend far beyond medical treatment to all aspects of community life.

A commitment to health promotion . Health promotion differs from the more familiar medical models of treatment and prevention. Both of these look at health from a negative point of view: there’s something wrong or potentially wrong, and the medical expert will step in to fix it or head it off. Health promotion looks at it from a positive point of view: you can take positive steps to improve and sustain your well-being.

Health promotion – and we’ll use the term here to mean the promotion of healthy communities as well as healthy individuals – is a key both to the thinking behind the Healthy Cities/Healthy Communities concept, and to actually developing healthy communities. It calls for a commitment on the part of all sectors of the community, particularly government, to promote community health by:

Building healthy public policy. Communities can establish policies that foster the health of the community. According to the Ottawa Charter, such policies are “coordinated action that leads to health, income, and social policies that foster greater equity.” Thus, smoking bans in restaurants, local tax policies that encourage businesses to create jobs, training for police and youth workers to help them communicate with youth and curb youth violence, and strong environmental ordinances might all be seen as healthy public policy. Community support of such policy produces an atmosphere that makes it easier for policy makers to make the right choices, because they know the public is behind them.

Like all elements of a Healthy Cities/Healthy Communities strategy, healthy public policy is about a great deal more than simply fostering individual health – it’s about public policy that fosters a healthy society. That means equity, health for all, and attention to such things as supportive environments (see below). Len Duhl talks about the fact that most public policy doesn’t deal with real needs, but rather with concerns of economics and power.  For public policy to be healthy, it has to reflect reality, rather than what policy makers want to see, or what will get them elected. Objectivity leads to public policy that benefits everyone, not just the influential few.

Creating supportive environments. Community environments run the gamut from the physical to the social to the economic to the political. Some supportive environments can be created by laws or regulations, some by community effort, and some only by changes in attitude (which may or may not be influenced by social and other pressures). Some examples:

The natural environment. Laws and regulations that restore and/or preserve clean air and water; preservation and creation of open space, natural beauty, and wilderness; restrictions on the use and disposal of toxic substances; conservation of natural resources, including plants and animals. All of these can enhance health and reduce stress, provide an aesthetic experience, and affect community life for the better.

The Peak to Peak Healthy Communities Project, based in Nederland, CO, is working on renovating parks and creating a transportation link from downtown to trails and natural areas outside the city.

The built environment. People-friendly design of buildings and spaces (human scale, with pedestrian passageways, gathering places, views, attractiveness, etc.); handicap access; preservation of historic and cultural heritage; cleanliness; safety (lighting, building and bridge design, long views, traffic patterns, bans on the use of toxic materials); good public transportation; traffic-free paths to encourage walking, jogging, and bicycling.

For example, a city that builds or designates traffic-free walking and bike paths will probably see more of its citizens walk and bicycle to work and on errands than one where walking and biking are difficult and dangerous.  Davis, California, for instance, has encouraged bicycling since 1960, when it became the first city in the US to paint bike lanes on its streets.  It has been able to discontinue its school bus service, because it’s so easy for children to bike, walk, or skate to school on its miles of car-free bike paths.

The economic environment. A healthy economic environment is one where there is work for everyone capable of working, where workers are treated as assets (see directly below) and are paid a living wage, where there is equal economic opportunity for all, where those who can’t work are supported, and where money doesn’t buy political power or immunity from the law.

Bethel New Life , a faith-based, grass roots initiative in the Garfield Park neighborhood of Chicago, started out to rehabilitate derelict housing in the area, using “sweat equity” – i.e., the labor of local residents, who could then exchange their work for part of the cost of the home they had rebuilt.  Now, Bethel employs more than 300, mostly local residents, in housing, employment training and job placement, economic development, cultural, family support, and community development programs.  Its board is drawn almost wholly from the community, and its programs are responses to voiced community need. Bethel continues to try to build assets and bring greater economic stability to the West Side of Chicago.

The work environment. The work environment should be a source of stimulation, rather than stress. Respect for employees, good safety precautions and procedures, firm rules forbidding harassment or abuse, adequate pay and/or other compensation, humane and fair production expectations and treatment – all contribute to work environments that nurture creativity and enthusiasm, and improve, rather than detract from, both production and workers’ quality of life.

The leisure environment. The work and home environments can provide time for leisure. The community can provide recreational and cultural opportunities to use in that leisure time: museums, parks and beaches, cultural and sports events, libraries, etc.

The social environment. A healthy community encourages social networks, provides gathering places where people from all parts of the community may mingle, nurtures families and children, offers universal education and other services, strives to forster non-violent an healthy behavior, invites familiartity and interaction among the various groups that make up the community, and treats all groups and individuals with respect.

The North Quabbin Community Coalition, in north central Massachusetts, was concerned, among other things, with the high incidence of child physical and sexual abuse in the area.  A task force on the issue eventually developed into Valuing Our Children, a parent education and family life program, that has trained large numbers of area parents as “parent educators,” and that provides services to area families.

The political environment. In a healthy community, all citizens have a say in how and by whom their community is governed, and have easy access to the information necessary to understand political situations and to make informed political decisions. Political decisions, opinions, and speech are protected. Citizens feel they have the power in the community – that they own it, and can and should control its direction.

Strengthening community action. Communities can encourage and strengthen community action in at least three ways: The first involves encouraging and fostering grass roots planning and action. When issues are identified and addressed by the people affected by them, as well as by others concerned, two things happen: the issues are more likely to be resolved successfully, and the people involved learn how to use their own resources to take charge of their lives and their communities. A second way of strengthening community action is through a commitment from government, community leaders, and other decision makers to encourage action by passing legislation conducive to it, lending public support to it through the media and other communication channels, and including members of all segments of the community in the conception, planning, and implementation of any community initiative. The third is by decision makers and the media ensuring a free and accurate flow of necessary information about the community and community initiatives to all citizens, and providing everyone in the community with learning opportunities about issues and about the quality of life in general.

The latter two of these methods are really top-down conceptions where government and others in power “let” citizens share in the decision-making process. While community members – particularly those with less experience in planning and running projects, or with less education – often need support to learn some necessary skills, the drive for change can and should come from them to begin with. There is a big difference between officials organizing an initiative and inviting citizens to join, and officials approaching citizens with a request to participate in envisioning and organizing an initiative.

Developing personal skills. Healthy communities aid their citizens in gaining the skills necessary to address health and community issues, by providing education and information in school, home (through the media and other sources), work, and community settings. Courses, workshops, billboards and posters, TV and radio ads, newspaper articles, mailings, fliers, community meetings, presentations in social clubs and churches, the use of electronic technology – all might serve to help citizens understand an issue, and make decisions about it.

The education referred to here doesn’t relate only to health and wellness issues and life skills (e.g., parenting).  In fact, it could, and does, apply to all learning that touches on topics related to the life of the community – political, social, environmental, and economic issues, for instance.  Furthermore, the encouragement and accessibility of lifelong learning is a mark of a healthy community.

Reorienting services. To be useful to a Healthy Cities/Healthy Communities strategy, health and other human and municipal services have to change from an individual- and treatment-centered point of view to one that is community-centered and focuses on the promotion of a healthy community.

It’s not only a matter of reorienting health services, but one of reorienting all services to work together toward the goal of a healthy community.  Any community issue has to be viewed through the lenses of both the individual and the community.  It takes a village not only to raise a child, but to pull families out of poverty, to create employment, to improve mental health, to stop violence, to safeguard the natural environment, and to create a just and equitable society.

There are a number of reasons to consider using the Healthy Cities/Healthy Communities framework in planning and implementing community action:

• Community perspective . Virtually all health and community issues are affected by (or are the direct result of) economic, social, political, and/or environmental factors that operate at the community level. If you don’t deal with those factors, the chances are slim that you’ll be able to resolve the issue you’re concerned with.
• Participatory planning and community ownership . Planning that includes those who will be directly affected by or benefit from any community initiative is more likely to reflect the real needs of the community than planning done only by one group. Furthermore, the participatory nature of the Healthy Cities/Healthy Communities framework means that citizens themselves create initiatives and goals for the community. Those initiatives and goals are theirs – not imposed by those in power or by outside “experts”. As a result, their commitment to the process and to the goals makes them far more likely to support and work for the outcomes they’ve chosen.
• Range of ideas . Citizen participation leads to the presentation and consideration of a greater range of ideas and possibilities, and is therefore more likely to hit upon effective goals and actions.
• Knowledge of the community . Citizen participation taps the community’s wisdom about its own history, relationships, and conflicts, and can thus steer initiatives around potentially fatal pitfalls.
• Community-wide ties . Involving all segments of the community encourages interaction across social, economic, and political lines. Those ties strengthen the community as a whole, change people’s perspectives for the better, increase community-wide cooperation, and can positively transform how the community works.
• Achievable and measurable goals . Although Healthy Cities/Healthy Communities’ ultimate goals are wide and long-term, each goal is achievable in a manageable amount of time, and its successful achievement can be demonstrated. Each success sets the stage for enthusiasm for the next initiative.
• Identification and use of community assets and resources . A Healthy Cities/Healthy Communities initiative depends to a large extent on human, institutional, organizational, environmental, and other assets and resources already available within the community. Through identifying and using these, communities learn that they can create their own positive change, and reshape themselves in the ways they want to.
• Community commitment to the long-term process . Because of the participatory nature of the process, and because it requires recruiting more people at each new phase, it builds an ever-expanding  core of people with varied skills, talents, and experience committed to the ideal of building a healthy community and improving the quality of life for everyone. That’s important for sustaining the work indefinitely.
• Community self-image. Through the use of the Healthy Cities/Healthy Communities process, the community comes to think of itself as a healthy community, and is concerned with maintaining that image through addressing issues as they come up. Perhaps more important, it is brought to look at the larger picture as well. Holding out an ultimate goal of a totally healthy community, whether attainable or not, keeps everyone working toward it, and means that planning goes on as a matter of course.  The healthy community ideal becomes embedded in the self-image of the community, and people understand that they can take their fate in their own hands and work to improve it. The process itself thus becomes an important element in the definition of a healthy community – one in which citizens work together to identify and solve problems, create and consolidate assets, generate improvements, and raise the quality of life for all.

The easy answer to this question is everyone in the community, and that’s in fact the ideal. In a perfect world, everyone everywhere would participate in some way in creating a healthy community. In the real world, while it’s important to try to involve all sectors of the community, you have to work to involve some particular people and groups if your effort is to be successful. Crucial participants include:

• Elected and appointed officials . Although a Healthy Cities/Healthy Communities initiative should not be top-down, it needs the commitment and backing of those with the power to make things happen. Officials can use the media to publicize the effort, pass laws and regulations (and enforce those already existing) that reinforce it, and throw the weight and resources of government behind it. Without official support, a community-wide effort is more likely to fail.
• Those most affected by the issue . A sure recipe for failure is to try to impose an intervention or initiative on a population “for their own good.” All too often, “experts” – often people who have no real knowledge of the group or its issues – formulate plans that might make perfect sense on paper, but make no sense at all in the actual situation for which they’re proposed. The participation of those affected in identifying the issues to address, developing action plans for addressing them, and implementing and overseeing those plans is absolutely crucial to the success of a Healthy Communities initiative. (This is equally true when the group concerned is the whole community.)

There are, unfortunately, many instances of a group resisting and short-circuiting well-meaning changes because they weren’t part of the planning.  The author experienced one as a teacher in Philadelphia, which had, at the time, an innovative and progressive school superintendent.  He tried to institute reforms that probably would have improved the lives of teachers students in the system, but he did it without conferring with them.  As a result, the teachers simply ignored directives from the central office, the reforms failed, and the superintendent was gone within three years.

• The people who will actually administer and carry out the initiative, or whose jobs or lives will be affected by it. It is both unfair and unwise to expect organization staff, community employees (police, firefighters, Department of Public Works personnel, etc.), business people, and others to throw themselves into carrying out an initiative they had no part in devising. It may have elements that ignore the realities of their jobs or their lives, or that make things harder than necessary for them, and they may be the only people who have the information to understand that. In addition, they may regard it as just another foolish imposition to be gotten around, and do as little as possible to make it effective.
• All the agencies and groups that will need to cooperate and to coordinate their activities in order to implement a community-wide effort . Both the ways in which these groups will work together, and which of them will have responsibility for what have to be part of the planning for any community-wide initiative. Without their full participation, there’s no guarantee that they’ll work together at all, let alone that the methods for their doing so will be simple and efficient.
• Community opinion leaders . These are the people whose opinions others trust, and who lead the community by adopting new ideas and pulling others with them. They are seen as level-headed, smart, and serving the best interests of the community. Some may be current or former members of the groups already listed, and others may be clergy, credible institutional or business people (college presidents or faculty, CEO’s), or just average citizens who are known for their integrity and common sense.

If you can gain the participation of members of all these groups, it is more likely that everyone else will follow. If you can’t get people from all these groups to buy in at the outset, an alternative is educating them about the process and persuading them to join it, while you continue to recruit other participants. Ultimately, the combination of education and your momentum will bring in those who were initially reluctant. That may take time and patience, but it’s worth the effort – it can easily mean the difference between a successful long-term Healthy Community movement and a dead-on-arrival, failed attempt at one.

Because the Healthy Cities/Healthy Communities framework is just that – an intellectual framework, rather than a prescription – there is no step-by-step instruction for employing it. It is meant to be adapted to the different needs of different communities. There are, however, necessary components of any Healthy Cities/Healthy Communities initiative:

• Create a compelling vision based on shared values . As with virtually any process that involves planning – and particularly participatory planning – the first step is to create a vision that defines the effort to be made. That vision may be broad (“A community that is truly just and equitable”) or more specific (“A community where every potential worker in the community can find employment that offers a living wage and acceptable working conditions”). Whatever the case, the vision must be compelling – one that motivates people to work for its realization. It must be founded in those values that they hold in common, and must be widely shared and recognized as legitimate and desirable.( Proclaiming Your Dream: Developing Vision and Mission Statements.)

In Orlando, Florida, the Healthy Community Initiative began with meetings of a few influential people. As they learned about healthy communities, the convened a group of about 160, representing all sectors of the city’s population – citizens of all races and economic levels, organizations and institutions, city government, other groups – to hash out a vision. That group, in turn, conducted citizen focus groups and public meetings to hear and understand citizens’ concerns. Ultimately, they drafted a vision, based on their own discussions and the input of hundreds of others from all walks of life, that contained 14 statements about what Orlando should be. That vision became the foundation of the initiative.

• Embrace a broad definition of health and well-being . Health must be seen as not merely the physical health of individuals, but the creation and nurturing of those factors leading to health named in the Ottawa Charter (peace, shelter, education, income, food, a stable ecosystem, sustainable resources, social justice, and equity). A truly healthy community encompasses – or works toward – all those elements and more.
• Address quality of life for everyone . The key word here is “everyone.” A Healthy Cities/Healthy Communities initiative should be aimed at improving the quality of life for all groups and individuals in the community, not just those in a particular target group or those who began the initiative.
• Engage diverse citizen participation and be citizen-driven . Initiatives should be originated, planned, and implemented with the full participation of citizens from all racial, ethnic, and socio-economic groups and all walks of life. Citizens themselves, rather than a government agency or experts of some sort, should be the force behind both the direction and the implementation of any community initiative.
• Seek multi-sectoral membership and widespread community ownership. All sectors of the community – government, the business and non-profit communities, health care, education, faith communities, cultural institutions and the arts, target populations, and ordinary citizens – should be represented in an initiative, and the community should feel that it created the initiative and owns it.

In many places in this and other sections of the Community Tool Box, we refer to “ownership” of an initiative or intervention or organization. In most cases, what we mean is that those who take part in creating and/or running such an endeavor feel that it belongs to them. It was their idea, and they therefore see themselves as not only supportive of it, but responsible for it. True ownership can rarely, if ever, be attached to actions or ideas that are imposed, by others who “know better” or have more power. It comes from within, from the feeling that you’ve made a choice based on your best judgment. That’s why the inclusion of people from all sectors of the community is so important to a successful Healthy Cities/ Healthy Communities process. At the end, perhaps after a lot of argument and soul-searching, participants feel that they’ve had a hand in creating something important that will result in better lives for everyone in the community.  There’s no substitute for that feeling to ensure their doing all they can to make their creation work.

• Socioeconomic equity.  For developed countries, the economic and social equality within the society or a given community is a greater determinant of death rates and average lifespan than the country’s position with regard to others. The size of the income gap between the most and least affluent segments of the society or community is tremendously important, and determines to a large extent whether people get what they need.
• Social connectedness. Many studies indicate that “belonging” – whether to a large extended family, a network of friends, a social or volunteer organization, or a faith community – is related to longer life and better health, as well as to community participation.
• Sense of personal efficacy. This refers to people’s sense of control over their lives. People with a higher sense of efficacy tend to live longer, maintain better health, and participate more vigorously in community affairs and politics.

Like the Ottawa Charter, the World Health Organization, in its publication The Solid Facts, recognizes the need to break these factors down into more manageable pieces. It lists ten factors that affect health and life expectancy, and advocates addressing each within a coherent program that looks at all of them within a society. These ten factors are: The social gradient (equity) Stress Early life Social exclusion (the opposite of social connectedness) Work Unemployment Social support Addiction Food Transport

• Address issues through collaborative problem-solving . Given a diverse group, there are bound to be disagreements and conflicts. These should be viewed as opportunities, rather than roadblocks, and people should be encouraged and helped to work together to reach creative solutions.
• Focus on systems change. To be successful, a Healthy Cities/Healthy Communities initiative has to be active, rather than reactive. It’s not enough to “fix” a problem: your goal is to eliminate the causes of that and other problems and improve the long-term quality of life in the community in the process.

In order to address causes, you have to concentrate not on individual problems, but on improving and changing systems – the ways in which the community operates, and the attitudes, assumptions, and policies behind them. That includes identifying, using, and strengthening the assets the community already possesses, as well as changing the systems that pose problem

• Build capacity using local assets and resources . All communities, no matter how troubled, have great real and potential strengths. These vary from community to community, but could include:

Individuals with the talents, skills, leadership, and passion to work to change the community for the better.

Individuals, businesses, and foundations that can provide material resources – money, space, etc. – to a community effort.

• Institutions – libraries, schools, hospitals, houses of worship – that have the capacity to act as both resources for and agents of change.
• Community-based and other organizations whose mission is to work for the betterment of the whole community.
• Governments and individual government officials that can add both official support and legal and regulatory power to an initiative.
• Human resources – the skills and work ethic of the community’s work force, for example.
• Natural and other environmental resources – open space, clean air and water, wilderness, fisheries, historic sites or buildings, housing stock.
• Perhaps most important, the potential for all these individuals, groups, and resources to be joined in a coordinated pursuit of a common vision.
• At least some of these and other assets already exist in virtually every community – usually to a far greater extent than most citizens realize until they start looking for them. They must be identified and included in a Healthy Cities/Healthy Communities effort.
• Measure and benchmark progress and outcomes . Whatever you’re doing, whether it’s a PR campaign or a complex behavioral intervention, you have to monitor and evaluate it in order to be sure that it’s effective. That means setting objectives – benchmarks – to indicate your progress along the road to your goal, and defining clearly the outcome you’re aiming for. Regularly monitoring what you’re doing is crucial, because it allows you to spot problems or inadequacies in goals, methods, procedures, communication, etc. and correct them before they derail your initiative entirely. Even more important, regular monitoring allows you to change what you’re doing to respond to changes in circumstances and community needs, so that you’re always addressing current reality. Communities are dynamic: they develop and change, sometimes in short periods. Your initiative has to be dynamic, too, especially if you expect it to continue for the long term.

Implementing a Healthy Communities strategy

How do you actually put these components together to create a healthy community? There’s no one way to do that – it depends on your community, the issues you want to address, and the ideas and capacities of the groups and individuals that participate in the Healthy Cities/Healthy Communities process. There are, however, some basic procedures that, at least in outline, should be common to any Healthy Cities/Healthy Communities initiative.

• Assemble a diverse and inclusive group . To begin a Healthy Cities/Healthy Communities initiative, people from all parts of the community have to come together to hammer out a vision. That group, as we’ve been saying throughout this section, should be representative of everyone in the community, so that whatever it decides will be seen as legitimate by just about everyone, and will be owned by the community.

Someone has to start the process. That may be a charismatic or persistent individual, an organization, a coalition, or a government office or agency. Whoever it is should be simply a convener, and not necessarily expect to lead over the long term. Leaders should be chosen by the group itself as it forms, and they should be collaborative ( Collaborative Leadership .)

This is not to say that a Healthy Communities effort doesn’t need leadership.  Quite the contrary – leadership and structure are necessary for any successful effort.  But leadership should be collaborative and arise from the community.  The leader may be an individual, or two, or a larger group.  Whatever the situation, the leadership should be one of an equal among equals, and decision-making should be the province of the whole group.  That’s how a participatory process works.

It is assumed that all the other steps listed here will also be carried out by an inclusive group, and that all sectors of the community – including those affected and individual citizens – will be represented and have decision-making power. The group may change from step to step or over time, but should remain inclusive and participatory.

• Generate a vision . A vision of how the community should be, based not on a single issue, but on values shared among all participants and on a high quality of life for everyone in the community, is needed to motivate and inspire participants and to guide the initiative over the long term. Generating such a vision may take time and a great deal of discussion, but it’s absolutely necessary for a successful effort.
• Assess the assets and resources in the community that can help you realize your vision, and the issues that act as barriers to it. Placing assets first is not just an accident here. A Healthy Cities/Healthy Communities initiative is best served by looking at the community through a positive lens, and asking first what’s right with it, rather than what’s wrong with it. The initiative then becomes an exercise in community health promotion, instead of the treatment of a diseased community. Taking a positive perspective affects for the better the attitudes of everyone involved, the community’s self-image, and the perception of whether or not realizing your vision is possible. By the same token, it’s important to be honest and clear-eyed about issues and problems in the community. Once they’ve been identified, they have to be acknowledged and understood, so they can be addressed at some point in the process.
• Choose a first issue to focus on. The best way to sink a long-term initiative is to try to accomplish all your goals at once. It’s vital to choose one issue – or in some cases, perhaps, two or three – to attack, and to make it one that can be resolved, so that your first effort leads to success.

What the issue is doesn’t matter, except in that it must be one chosen by citizens as important to them, and must be one that is specific enough to be resolvable.  Len Duhl talks about the process in a 1993 interview by Joe Flower in Healthcare Forum Journal . The first thing that happens when the Healthy Cities program develops in a new place is that some persons assume the responsibility of bringing together all segments of the community to deal with the issues: the business community, the government, the voluntary sector and the citizens themselves. ... Then there are "vision workshops" in which people are asked, "What kind of city do you really want?" My personal surprise is that the clearer I am about what a Healthy City program is, the less likely a community is to develop it. The fuzzier I am in what a Healthy City is, "A Healthy City is what you want to make it," the greater the odds are that they will start. The various participants define the program. All I say is that you have to start someplace. You have to begin to look at it in an ecological and systemic way. You have to involve people. You have to start thinking of values of equity and participation. Beyond that, you can start wherever you want. Some cities start on the environment, on pollution, on smoking, seat belts and the quality of life index. Some have government operations, some have newspapers, big organizations, housing. Barcelona linked it to the Olympics. Glasgow linked it to developing itself as the cultural capital of Europe. It is being done every way.

• Develop a community-wide strategy , incorporating as many organizations, levels, and sectors as possible . Here’s where Healthy Cities/Healthy Communities differs most from many logic models and other methods that are clear on exactly how to go about planning and carrying out an initiative. Rather than offering a step-by-step process, HC might use any participatory planning process that incorporates a community-wide approach and that looks at all the possible areas that might affect the issue chosen. Thus, you might use VMOSA , PRECEDE/PROCEED , or some variant, or a less structured process – whatever seems appropriate and works for your community.

It is important, however, that your plan result in a community-wide, multi-pronged approach. If your focus is on youth violence, for instance, it should involve some sort of action or supportive function by local government, parents and parent advocates, schools, law enforcement, the court system, welfare, agencies that deal with youth and families, physical and mental health services, Family Planning, the media, adult literacy (dropouts), and potentially or formerly violent youth and their victims. All of these groups and individuals should be working together as a team, each referring youth to other appropriate services or agencies among them, and all coordinated and collaborating in their operation. The focus should be on changing the systems that make a problem possible, or that present barriers to the ideal the community is working toward.

• Implement the plan. Once again, this should involve a community-wide effort. Any oversight of the implementation should include a broad range of individuals and groups, representing a cross-section of the community.
• Monitor and adjust your initiative or intervention . Once you’ve implemented your plan, it’s crucial to evaluate the effectiveness of both your process (Are you doing what you set out to do?) and your results (Are you reaching your benchmarks? Are you having the planned effect on the issue?) If an evaluation gives unsatisfactory answers to any of these questions, you can revisit the issue, determine the reasons your plan isn’t working well, and change it accordingly.
• Establish new systems that will maintain and build on the gains you’ve made . Once you’ve reduced youth violence, for example, you still have to do whatever is necessary to make sure it doesn’t rise again, and that it continues to decline. (What’s the ultimate goal here? Is there an acceptable level of youth violence?) That may mean setting up new organizations or programs, working to change or cement changes in community attitudes and procedures, redesigning school curricula, working regularly with the media – whatever it takes to sustain progress.
• Celebrate benchmarks and successes . Public celebration of achievements not only energizes those who have been working toward them, but informs the community that the drive toward a healthy community is moving forward successfully. It helps to establish the idea of a healthy community in the public mind, and to build a foundation for the continuation of the initiative.
• Tackle the next issue(s). The ultimate goal here is the development of a truly healthy community, which translates to improving the quality of life for everyone in the community. After your first success, it’s time to use your momentum to address another (or more than one other) issue. That may be the removal of a barrier to a healthy community, or it may be the creation of a necessary element of a healthy community. In either case, it means sustaining citizens’ commitment to an ongoing and long-term process, the end result of which is a community controlled by its residents, where all systems work toward the public good.

The health of a community, like that of an individual, depends on far more than freedom from pain or disease. Health, or its lack, for a community is the result of a large number of factors, often intertwined, that span the social, economic, political, physical, and environmental spheres. Virtually any community issue has an effect on, and is affected by, the overall health of the community as a whole, and therefore should be approached in a community context. Healthy Cities/Healthy Communities provides a philosophical framework for an inclusive, participatory process aimed at raising the quality of life for everyone, and creating a truly healthy community.

Two basic premises underlying the Healthy Cities/Healthy Communities concept are a comprehensive view of health and community issues, covering a broad range of factors that contribute to a healthy community; and a commitment to the active promotion of a healthy community, rather than the “treatment” of problems. By addressing the social and other determinants of health and community issues (including the Ottawa Charter’s list of peace, shelter, education, food, income, a stable ecosystem, sustainable resources, social justice, and equity), and by creating appropriate policy and environments, encouraging social action, providing personal skills, and reorienting services to a more wide-ranging approach, communities can foster citizen empowerment and equity.

Reasons for adopting the Healthy Cities/Healthy Communities approach include:

• Its community perspective, leading to a more effective approach to issues.
• Community ownership of any effort, resulting from community participation in its development and implementation.
• The broad range of ideas gained from a participatory process.
• Its access to citizens’ knowledge of the community, helping to avoid pitfalls caused by ignorance of community history and relationships.
• The forging of community-wide and ties that cross economic, social, racial, and other lines.
• Participatory planning leading to solutions that reflect the community’s real needs.
• The adoption of achievable goals, leading to success.
• The identification and use of community assets and resources which both take advantage of what already exists, and teach the community what it can do with its own considerable resources.
• The fostering of community commitment to the process of building a healthy community.
• The creation of a healthy community self-image.

While a Healthy Cities/Healthy Communities process should involve everyone, some particularly important participants include local government and officials; those affected by the issue(s); those who will actually administer and implement the initiative, or whose lives or jobs will be affected by it; any organizations that will be expected to work together; and opinion leaders.

There are 10 important components of a Healthy Cities/Healthy Communities process:

• Create a compelling vision based on shared values.
• Embrace a broad definition of health and well-being.
• Address quality of life for everyone.
• Engage diverse citizen participation and be citizen-driven.
• Multi-sectoral membership and widespread community ownership.
• Acknowledge the social determinants of health and the interrelationship of health with other issues (housing, education, peace, equity, social justice).
• Address issues through collaborative problem-solving.
• Focus on systems change.
• Build capacity using local assets and resources.
• Measure and benchmark progress and outcomes.

Although there is no one step-by-step procedure for a Healthy Cities/Healthy Communities initiative – both the content and the structure of the process depend upon your community’s needs, and, particularly on community decisions – there is, given the ten components above, a reasonable way to approach it in most cases.

• Assemble a diverse and inclusive group.
• Generate a vision.
• Assess the assets and resources in the community that can help you realize your vision, and the issues that act as barriers to it.
• Choose a first issue to focus on.
• Develop a community-wide strategy, incorporating as many organizations, levels, and sectors as possible.
• Implement the plan.
• Monitor and adjust your initiative or intervention.
• Establish new systems that will maintain and build on the gains you’ve made.
• Celebrate benchmarks and successes.
• Tackle the next issue.

Online Resources

(The goal in choosing sites here has been to offer a few that give background or general information on Healthy Cities/Healthy Communities, and a few that are the sites of specific programs.  Nearly every Healthy Cities site seems to have its own web page, and these can easily be found by searching “healthy cities” and/or “healthy communities.”)

Bethel New Life , a grass roots, church-based urban development effort in the Garfield Park neighborhood of Chicago.  A bottom-up initiative that grew organically over many years, responding to the voiced needs of the community.  Most staff and board members are community residents.

Mesa County, CO:   A case study of community transformation . A grass roots effort that involved the whole community and grew into the Civic Forum; and a more top-down community health assessment.

Community Partners, Inc ., an organization deeply involved in the Healthy Communities movement.

Essential State Level Capacities for Support of Local Healthy Communities Efforts , by Peter Lee, Tom Wolff, Joan Twiss, Robin Wilcox, Christine Lyman, and Cathy O’Connor.

Greater Orlando Healthy Communities Initiative . A very top-down effort, started by current and former Junior League presidents, the newspaper editor, the mayor, and other prominent citizens.  They involved the community with the help of a consultant.

The Healthy Communities Program  in Aiken, South Carolina.  A “model” program, focused on infant mortality.  A top-down effort, it nonetheless involves the community in planning and input, and has been highly successful not only at reducing infant mortality, but at providing other needed services, many not directly related to health.

Healthy Cities information from WHO Denmark , the godfather of the Healthy Cities/Healthy Communities movement.

The Healthy Cities initiative of Illawarra, Australia .

Healthy People in Healthy Communities , a guide from the US Dept. of Health and Human Services.

The International Healthy Cities Foundation .

Links to numerous articles on Healthy Cities/Healthy Communities from the Change Project.  Includes interviews with   Len Duhl and Ilona Kickbusch   by  Joe Flower  from the Healthcare Forum Journal.

The  Ottawa Charter .

The Peak to Peak Healthy Communities Project , Gilpin County, Colorado.

The Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of Healthy Communities

WHO information on Healthy Cities

Print Resources

Norris, T. (2002).  America’s Best Kept Secret: The Healthy Communities Movement .  (Reprint by Healthy Communities Massachusetts from the National Civic Review, introduction, Spring, 1997.) Pan American Health Organization. Healthy Municipalities and Communities: Mayors’ Guide for Promoting Quality of Life. Washington, DC.

Public Health , Vol. 115, Nos. 2 and 3 (March/April & May/June, 2000): Focus on Healthy Communities., Vol. 115.

Wilkinson, R., & Michael M. (1998) eds. The Solid Facts: Social Determinants of Health . World Health Organization: Copenhagen.

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What Is Community, and Why Is It Important?

In 2005, the Center asked several people whose work involves community building this simple question, and got some not-so-simple answers.

Riché C. Zamor, Executive Director, Latin American Health Institute, Boston

To me a community is a group of individuals connected to each other by one or more attribute(s). The element that links them together is at the core, and is the essence of the group. Just as denoted by the root and the suffix of the word (common-unity), a certain segment of the population is united by a familiar thread. In the field of Public Health, we see community as a group of folks that are at risk of being infected or affected by certain types of diseases based on their demographic, social, and economic status. A community is a familiar thread used to bring people together to advocate and support each other in the fight to overcome those threats. As human beings, we need a sense of belonging, and that sense of belonging is what connects us to the many relationships we develop. Communities are also rich in resources, that is where their collective aspect comes into play. We are all members of many communities (family, work, neighborhood, etc.), and we constantly move in and out of them, depending on the situation. Community is where we find comfort in difficult times. When things are not going well in one community, we have the option to move to another. For me, the community is where one finds the balance between physical and mental fitness.

Sarah Michelson, Teen Intern with The Food Project

Most people in today’s world rely on a community for practical purposes. The necessities of life rarely come from one’s own hands, but rather from a complicated “web of mutuality,” as Martin Luther King, Jr. once phrased it. While most people need to be part of a community for life’s necessities, most people want to be part of a community because there is something indescribably lovely about being a part of a group of people who share something more substantial than geographical location… something they feel passionately about. Something that, when shared, makes individuals seem less lonely. A community is a safe place.

But there is something potentially dangerous about communities. A community that is safe, comfortable, and trusting can be so enticing that individuals can forget about the world outside of their community, or regard other communities with subtle prejudices.

I am a member of the Sudbury community, an affluent suburb of Boston. While I work to give back to my community, I also need to spend some time away from Sudbury, to know what life is like in Bolivia, in the American South, or in Roxbury, the inner city neighborhood where the Food Project does a lot of its work. I need to go to these places to remind myself that this way of life I am used to is not the only way or the best way. I need to be reminded that, while I give to my community, other communities are no less deserving. I need to be reminded that when I form a connection with someone based on common experience, it is not because that someone is from Sudbury. It is because we are both human beings, and I am part of a global community.

Alan O’Hare, Schenachie (Celtic Storyteller) and Director Life Story Theatre

In the silence of an early morning walk recently, the crystal song of a scarlet red cardinal atop an oak tree awakened me more fully. As I stood listening to him and his mate in a nearby tree serenading each other, a couple walking their dog joined me. Without speaking a word, it was clear we were enchanted by the gift of their song, and we joined together briefly in a community of celebration for the gifts of Nature.

The new light, the morning hymn, and the momentary connection with other travelers evoked images from other communities. Each of these whether for learning, work, healing, prayer, or friendship creates for us a safe experience of belonging, purpose, and shared values. In them, each of us encounters who we are and what our gifts are.

In the Sufi tradition, it is taught that the primary purpose of life is to awaken to the essence of who we are. Once we do so, we are invited to lovingly embrace this realization. The gift of community is that it offers each of us the fire of affirmation and support to achieve this… even on those days when we feel no fire.

But at that time we can recall the words of Thich Nhat Hanh: “I ask all of you to hold up your hands and tell me the truth. Do you believe, as I do, that someone in our hamlet is keeping the fire alive?”

Frances Moore Lappé, Author of Democracy’s Edge

Community — meaning for me “nurturing human connection” — is our survival. We humans wither outside of community. It isn’t a luxury, a nice thing; community is essential to our well being.   Inclusion in the social life of society is community’s foundation. By inclusion I mean universal access to entry, starting with legal protections against exclusion — racial discrimination, for example — but going far, far beyond. Inclusion means access to jobs with fair pay, decent shelter, effective schools, and reliable health care. If you deprive “a man of a job or an income,” said Martin Luther King, Jr., “you are in substance saying to that man that he has no right to exist…it is murder, psychologically…”   Yet today the ethic in ascendance is exclusion. We have allowed the government to let the minimum wage lose a quarter of its value in thirty years. One out of every five jobs in the U.S. will not lift a family of four out of poverty. And we’ve allowed health care to become unattainable by so many that America now ranks 42nd among the world’s nations in infant survival.   This profoundly disturbing assault on community calls us to accept an irony: We must risk exclusion — alienating or at least disturbing others — to become advocates for inclusion in community. That may mean speaking our minds even if  doing so triggers discomfort in others, reaching out to those excluded even when it feels awkward, engaging in visible civic public action such as a vigil or door-to-door education even where we risk angry rejection.   Appreciating that community is essential to human well being calls us to a particular kind of courage: walking with our fear of exclusion in order to stand up for inclusion.

Lisa R. Fortuna, Staff Psychiatrist, Cambridge Health Alliance

Community is about growing with others. I grew up surrounded by a culturally rich and loving community which has shaped my identity and pride as a black Latina woman. I have been blessed to be around young people and families ever engaged in improving the vitality of their community. Now, thirty five years into my life, I am a child and adolescent psychiatrist. Everyday, I get to meet with young people. I have the opportunity to be there in their lives during some of their most difficult and distressing moments. Because of who these young people are, and because of the love I have received, I strive to be the best physician I can be and to serve those who need me most.

In the process, my spirituality has been a central stabilizing and informing force in my life, one that has been very personal, very quiet and that has nevertheless guided every one of my life choices. This interface between community, medicine, and personal faith started with an early and long-standing fascination with the world around me. My mind was ignited by a love of science and medicine, and reliant on the power of community and deep respect and appreciation for healing. This attitude towards the world was inspired by my grandmother my mother, and the elders around me who took the time to care. This is what community is about… taking care of each other.

Shirley Tang, Assistant Professor, Asian-American Studies & American Studies, UM ass Boston

I accepted the invitation to write for the BRC newsletter as a way to reflect briefly upon my own questions about community-building after twelve years of teaching and developing Asian American Studies in both university and street settings with students from urban immigrant/refugee communities. I was first drawn to Asian American Studies, and ethnic studies in general, because of its revolutionary commitments to community-building, justice-centered education, and hands-on, practical work. I have always felt that the best places to learn/teach are not behind the closed doors of an ivory tower but where people are experiencing marginalization and exclusion from decision-making power and resource-rich opportunities.

Several years ago, that was all theory. After I listened carefully to how young people and their families experienced problems first-hand and after I realized that they had always been at the forefront in fighting for a just and healthy community for all, I had begun to see things from their perspective and apply myself to keeping their—our—dreams alive. Since I started working at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, I have become a U.S. resident, and like many of the students and community members that I work with, I also found my life becoming more and more tied to the political and social situation of immigrant communities/communities of color in U.S.  society.

So, why is community important? Because community saves us from the isolation and alienation we fear. Because in the real world people have no choice. Because community is about finding each other and a place we can call home. But we are also compelled to build community not only because we are survivors in an existing world order but because we bring differences to a society that erases our differences. By dealing with differences we confront the question of the social and economic foundations of our society. By building community we put some order in the fragmented world.

Interdependence

It’s a simple idea with vast implications. Known in Western society as interdependence, the concept has been known for millennia in Buddhism as “dependent origination.” Because of the light it sheds on all manner of living relations, Ikeda returns time and again to it in his writings, speeches, and dialogues.

Goal: Promote health and safety in community settings.

A person’s community can have a major impact on their health and well-being. Healthy People 2030 focuses on ways organizations, businesses, schools, and residents can help build healthier communities. 

Community organizations that provide preventive health care services can help improve health and well-being. Businesses can also help keep people safe and healthy — like by making sure employees use protective gear when needed and taking steps to make workplaces safer.  

Schools and community organizations can play an important role in helping children and adolescents stay healthy. For example, giving children and adolescents opportunities to play sports can help them get more physical activity. 

Objective Status

Learn more about objective types

Related Objectives

The following is a sample of objectives related to this topic. Some objectives may include population data.

Community — General

Emergency preparedness.

• Foodborne Illness

Heart Disease and Stroke

• Nutrition and Healthy Eating
• Physical Activity

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Essay Papers Writing Online

The impact of community service – a deep dive into the power of giving back to society.

Community service essays serve as a powerful tool for individuals to reflect on their experiences, values, and impact on the world around them. Through the process of writing about their volunteer work, students are able to articulate the positive changes they have made in their communities and explore the lessons they have learned along the way.

Community service essays also play a crucial role in highlighting the importance of giving back to society and fostering a sense of empathy and compassion in individuals. By sharing personal stories of service, students can inspire others to get involved and make a difference in their own communities.

Moreover, community service essays can help students gain valuable skills such as critical thinking, communication, and problem-solving, as they reflect on the challenges and successes of their volunteer experiences. By documenting their service work, students can also showcase their commitment to social responsibility and community engagement to colleges, scholarship committees, and potential employers.

Why Community Service Essays Matter

In today’s society, the importance of community service essays cannot be overstated. These essays serve as a platform for individuals to showcase their dedication to helping others and making a positive impact on their communities. Through these essays, individuals can share their experiences, insights, and perspectives on the value of giving back to society.

Community service essays also play a crucial role in raising awareness about different social issues and encouraging others to get involved in volunteer work. By sharing personal stories and reflections, individuals can inspire and motivate others to take action and contribute to the betterment of society.

Furthermore, community service essays provide an opportunity for individuals to reflect on their own values, beliefs, and goals. Through the process of writing these essays, individuals can gain a deeper understanding of themselves and their place in the world, leading to personal growth and development.

In conclusion, community service essays matter because they have the power to inspire change, raise awareness, and promote personal growth. By sharing their stories and insights, individuals can make a difference in their communities and create a more compassionate and giving society.

The Impact of Community Service Essays

Community service essays have a profound impact on both the individuals writing them and the communities they serve. These essays serve as a platform for students to reflect on their experiences and articulate the lessons they have learned through their service work.

One of the primary impacts of community service essays is the opportunity for self-reflection. Students are encouraged to critically analyze their experiences, challenges, and accomplishments during their community service activities. This reflection helps students develop a deeper understanding of themselves, their values, and their role in the community.

Another significant impact of community service essays is the awareness they raise about social issues and community needs. By sharing their stories and insights, students can shed light on important issues and inspire others to get involved in community service. These essays can also help community organizations and stakeholders better understand the needs of their communities and how they can address them effectively.

Overall, community service essays play a vital role in promoting social responsibility, empathy, and civic engagement. They empower students to make a positive impact in their communities and contribute to creating a more compassionate and inclusive society.

Guidelines for Writing Community Service Essays

When writing a community service essay, it is important to follow certain guidelines to ensure that your message is clear and impactful. Here are some tips to help you craft a powerful and compelling essay:

• Start by brainstorming ideas and reflecting on your community service experiences.
• Clearly define the purpose of your essay and what you hope to convey to your readers.
• Organize your essay with a clear introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion.
• Use specific examples and anecdotes to support your points and showcase your personal growth.
• Highlight the impact of your community service activities on both yourself and others.
• Showcase your passion and dedication to serving your community.
• Be authentic and honest in your writing, and avoid exaggerating or embellishing your experiences.
• Edit and proofread your essay carefully to ensure clarity, coherence, and proper grammar.

Examples of Effective Community Service Essays

Community service essays can have a powerful impact on the reader when they are well-written and thoughtful. Here are a few examples to inspire you:

1. A Well-Structured Essay:

This essay begins with a compelling introduction that clearly articulates the author’s motivation for engaging in community service. The body paragraphs provide specific examples of the author’s experiences and the impact they had on both the community and themselves. The conclusion ties everything together, reflecting on the lessons learned and the importance of giving back.

2. Personal Reflection:

This essay delves deep into the author’s personal experiences during their community service work. It explores the challenges they faced, the emotions they encountered, and the growth they underwent. By sharing vulnerable moments and candid reflections, the author creates a connection with the reader and demonstrates the transformational power of service.

3. Future Goals and Impact:

This essay not only discusses past community service experiences but also looks toward the future. The author shares their aspirations for continued service and outlines how they plan to make a difference in the world. By showcasing a sense of purpose and vision, this essay inspires the reader to consider their own potential for impact.

These examples illustrate how community service essays can be effective tools for conveying meaningful stories, inspiring others, and showcasing personal growth. By crafting a compelling narrative and reflecting on the significance of service, you can create an essay that leaves a lasting impression.

How Community Service Essays Empower Individuals

Community service essays provide individuals with a platform to express their thoughts, share their experiences, and make a meaningful impact on society. By writing about their volunteer work and the lessons they have learned, individuals can empower themselves to create positive change and inspire others to do the same.

• Through community service essays, individuals can reflect on the importance of giving back to their communities and the value of helping those in need.
• These essays can serve as a source of motivation and inspiration for individuals to continue their philanthropic efforts and make a difference in the world.
• By sharing their stories through community service essays, individuals can raise awareness about social issues and promote greater empathy and understanding among their peers.

Overall, community service essays empower individuals to take action, advocate for change, and contribute to building a more compassionate and equitable society.

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