A Community Development Corporation's role in collaborative health planning: Addressing health disparities through a REACH US Action Community in Southeast Chicago

Community Development Corporations have been an underutilized resource in collaborative efforts to address health planning and policy in U.S. urban communities. Created in the late 1960's in an effort to more effectively bridge public and private resources to address poverty through housing and commercial development, Community Development Corporations are nonprofit organizations governed by community boards typically including representatives of financial institutions, government, and foundations (Johnson 2004; Austin and Lemon 2005:85). In 2007, CDC's Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health (REACH) US funded 22 Action Communities in 2007. The purpose was to support community-based collaborative initiatives to address health disparities. Of these, the Chicago Southeast Diabetes Community Action Community (now called Southeast HD) is the only Action Community to have a Community Development Corporation, the Southeast Chicago Development Commission (SEDCOM) as a lead organization. Other key partners in the initiative include the University of Illinois at Chicago's Midwest Latino Health Research Center, health and human services agencies, and community based organizations. Southeast HD aims to address systemic barriers to reducing diabetes and cardiovascular disease among Latinos and African-Americans. During Southeast HD's start-up phase, participatory planning, combining methodologies from the public and private sector, identified needs of member organizations and steps to meet them, including training in social marketing, coordination and extension of existing communications vehicles, and workforce development activities that will support increasing the demand as well as the supply for healthy eating and physical activity programs based at neighborhood sites.