Focusing on the Drivers of Healthy Communities: HUD's Healthy Communities Transformation Initiative

Communities across the country are trying to improve the health and well-being of their residents by promoting sustainable, healthy housing and neighborhoods. But how is the “health” of a community measured? Is it the number of people with disease? Or is it neighborhood factors such as quality parks and schools, good housing, accessible shops and services, efficient transportation, and safe, clean environments? Determining the right measures to track and evaluate can be daunting.  Health-based indicators often focus only on the presence of disease, overlooking the underlying drivers of health disparities within a community.  What indicators are designed to address the range of physical and social determinants of health at the neighborhood level?

HUD launched the Healthy Communities Transformation Initiative (HCTI) to address the need for comprehensive neighborhood-level indicators that would help communities better integrate health into community planning and development. The HCTI is uniquely focused on key social, economic and environmental drivers of community health at the neighborhood level. Two tools are being created under the HCTI: the Healthy Communities Index (HCI) and the Healthy Communities Assessment Tool (HCAT). The tools are designed to help communities establish baseline conditions, prioritize investments, and evaluate progress towards community health goals.

The HCI offers a standard set of evidence-based community health indicators selected on the basis of data availability; measurability; nexus to health; scalability for a range of communities; and capacity to motivate and create actionable policy and program change. Its companion tool, the HCAT, will help communities evaluate neighborhood level health factors and engage diverse stakeholders in efforts to improve community health.

This presentation will introduce the HCTI, describe the HCI’s development process, and demonstrate the HCAT. Discussions will highlight the challenges and opportunities of working across diverse sectors to establish common, health-focused frameworks to evaluate community health at the neighborhood level.