All aboard? “Counting” determinants of health with communities before and after light rail transit construction

The proposed Central Corridor Light Rail transit system linking Minneapolis and St. Paul, MN has the potential to promote redevelopment and impact public health in surrounding communities. To track broad environmental changes affecting public health, Minnesota Department of Health's (MDH) Healthy Communities Count! project used “Counts” to establish baseline measures.

Purpose of the Work: MDH's project goals are to educate communities about the determinants of health, provide communities with tools to assess local health status, and promote public health and investments in brownfield redevelopment.

Methods: Two types of counts were used. Local groups created “Community Counts” by identifying neighborhood health concerns. MDH developed “Core Counts” to measure factors along the entire corridor, including healthy food access, asthma hospitalizations, lead abatements, and brownfields. MDH obtained data for “Counts” from the US Census, environmental health, health statistics, and municipal datasets. MDH also held meetings and workshops with community groups, local environmental health, and state and local health promotion programs to collect information for “Counts”. Staff created GIS maps, fact sheets, and MDH webpages to convey health information. Results and Implications:Incorporating local input in GIS maps and fact sheets increased trust of communities in the project process. The project also disseminated information for community groups to use in planning and health promotion activities.

Recommendations:Steps for continued success of the project include transferring data collection strategies to communities for re-analysis after construction of LRT. MDH can also establish a network of experts to help guide community groups through identifying and re-measuring counts.