Community indicators as a participatory policy framework for health equity

Throughout the world, community indicator frameworks are being used to help guide policy development and intervention planning to achieve healthy and sustainable community objectives. Community Indicator frameworks also provide a flexible, innovative, and systematic way for communities to become actively engaged with their health departments and other government agencies in shaping local policy, and in helping to gather the data needed to inform policy. For these reasons, community indicator frameworks provide an excellent means for engaging communities in participatory data-driven partnerships for policy change to achieve health equity. Also, because community indicator frameworks can be developed to address the particular needs of marginalized communities (as Canada, New Zealand, and Australia have done for their indigenous communities), indicator frameworks can also be an excellent means of engaging communities most impacted by health disparities in work toward the elimination of these disparities. This presentation will discuss the structure of a major U.S. community indicator project (Sustainable Seattle), and suggest the ways such a model could be adapted to provide the foundation for the development of a major city-wide health equity/sustainable community indicator initiative in Detroit.