The Private Sector as a Catalyst for Health Equity and a Vibrant Economy Proceedings of a Workshop (2016) / Chapter Skim
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5 Community-Based Initiatives
5 Community-Based Initiatives
Pages 31-42
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From page 31... ...
"Over the years we saw the program grow," said Kelly Fischer, staff analyst for the Injury and Violence Prevention Program at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, adding "We saw how it had the potential to improve health, chronic disease, and mental health, as well as build community trust through cross-sector collaboration, and give the government an opportunity to interact with the community in a more positive way." In its fourth year, the program includes nine parks and in 2014 received an award from The California Endowment for advancing health equity. Parks and Recreation Director Russ Guiney and CEO William Fujioka conceived of Parks After Dark after the success of Summer Night Lights, a program that kept 32 Los Angeles parks open late during the summers.
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From page 32... ...
The program allows the park staff to become community liaisons and public health ambassadors who can provide a safe and welcoming space with strong community support. One thing that helped the program is the gang injunction that exists in Los Angeles County, where designated gangs are not allowed to congregate in certain areas.
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From page 33... ...
The Parks After Dark program has affected not only violence but also community health, Fischer added. Parks After Dark received funding to do a health impact assessment report in 2014 that examined physical activity and violence in the park communities.
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From page 34... ...
This was during a period when the National Association of County and City Health Officials was beginning to move away from the term health disparities to the term health inequities, which addresses health conditions that are avoidable, unfair, and unjust, Tillman noted, adding that "Our work on the initiative was to raise the visibility of health inequities and also reframe the experience that people were having from an individual shortcoming to a systems failure." The program aimed to help people understand that unnatural suffering was caused by more than just personal failures. In 2008 the leaders of the initiative held conversations across the county at various public venues to produce a set of recommendations.
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From page 35... ...
By weatherizing the homes, residents were less likely to sell. Initially, the program experienced difficulties in tackling housing, since programs run through the public health department traditionally do not deal with housing policy.
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From page 36... ...
The actions taken by the Health Equity Initiative to reframe the conception of minority health, multicultural health, and health disparities have broadened the conversation around health equity from Multnomah County to the state of Oregon, which created an Office of Equity and Inclusion in 2009, Tillman reported. In 2010, Multnomah County started an Office on Diversity and Equity, which extended much of the work of the Health Equity Initiative, followed by the City of Portland's introduction of an Office of Equity and Human Rights in 2011.
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From page 37... ...
In the 1980s, this area, referred to as the Dudley Triangle, was deemed the area with the highest concentration of vacant lots and disinvestment in Boston. The 62 acres in the Dudley Triangle had 1,300 vacant lots.1 The Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI)
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From page 38... ...
This included 77 cooperative housing units, 53 rental units, a playground, a small orchard and garden, a community greenhouse, 1.5 acres of urban farm land, a community nonprofit office space, and a commercial space. The greenhouse is on the site of a former chop shop and is operated by a community partner called the Food Project.
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From page 39... ...
In the past 2 years, 175 raised-bed gardens have been built in the community. DSNI is the only community-based nonprofit in the United States to be granted imminent domain authority over abandoned land, Watson observed, which it has used to transform more than half of the area's 1,300 abandoned parcels of land into schools, parks, community buildings, urban agricultural plots, and affordable housing.
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From page 40... ...
'" Program practitioners have to trust the community to provide input and act as partners, even if data are not immediately available to build trust, community members do not have the educational credentials, or community procedures are different than governmental procedures. "The hardest part was getting people who represent dominant cultural strategies to step back and trust that the communities knew what they were doing and that their solutions would be effective," she concluded.
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From page 41... ...
The health equity initiative in Multnomah County did not start with much community engagement, but the organizers quickly realized that they needed to get community members involved, Tillman recounted. Today, culturally specific programs, such as a healthy birth initiative focused on African American infant mortality, have community advisory boards.
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From page 42... ...
A policy shift is required." Finally, she mentioned an interesting effort to bring healthy eating opportunities to a north Portland neighborhood that was formerly a food desert. A community corner store was established with the agreement that it would not sell tobacco or alcohol.
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