Making Sense of the Built Environment for Local Communities: The Healthy Community Action Guide

All not for profit hospitals in California are required to conduct community needs assessments every three years to meet the requirements established by the California State Legislature in SB 697. Marin County's 2011 Needs Assessment report was the sixth in the series and the first to explicitly call out health disparities and their connection to the built environment. The Needs Assessment report has called attention to health issues in the community and the need for local action. However, local communities in Marin have experienced great difficulty in taking needs assessment findings and turning them into local policy interventions, especially in an era characterized by reduced resources. To assist communities in taking action and developing a local "health in all policy approach,” the County Department of Health and Human Services conducted an exhaustive review of over two dozen model policy guides and frameworks and subsequently developed a community-friendly tool containing evidence based policies that met current community needs and would further support local changes to the built environment. All of these policy recommendations were then organized into the four environment categories utilized by Policy Link: physical, service, social and economic. To make the guide customizable for each community in Marin, we have created an interactive web site that communities can use to select policies across the four environment categories that will address problems experienced by their community. The process in developing the tool will be described and recommendations for replication and sustainability provided.