Community Involvement in the Design of Community Health Equity Reports

Objective: This project utilized the input of community teams in cities and counties participating in the “Place Matters” initiative to develop tailored community health equity reports targeting local policies.

Methods: Researchers worked with partner teams—local health departments, faith-based organizations, and other civic leaders— in nine communities to shape the report to address local concerns and priorities. Specifically, the community teams were directly engaged in defining goals for the report; domains and indicators of interest; key questions, the analytic plan, and valid geocoded data sources; and relevant prior research in the community. The process, which facilitated this community engagement, will be described. Results: The teams sought to use the reports to persuade elected officials to improve access to food, quality of public education, and access to health care. Domains of interest included environmental justice, institutional racism, the built environment, and violence. Health outcomes of interest included life expectancy, asthma and obesity. The specific indicators selected by the communities to measure geographic disparities in social determinants of health, and the lessons learned from the dialogue, will be presented.

Conclusions: Nine different communities with varied interests were able to collaborate with researchers to tailor studies to local priorities in order to create leverage to facilitate policy change. The advantages and challenges of engaging community input as a first step in such research will be reviewed.