Backyard Initiative Community Health Survey: Assessing Social Cohesion and General Health

Background: Prior research has demonstrated that social capital and social cohesion impact health; however, few studies have examined the association between health status and sense of community. The Minneapolis-based Backyard Initiative (BYI), a partnership between Allina Health, the Cultural Wellness Center, and community residents to improve health, conducted a Community Health Survey (CHS) to address questions about community-defined health priority areas including social cohesion and general health.  

Objectives: To describe the association between social cohesion and general health among participants in the 2013 BYI CHS.

Methods: The BYI Assessment Team, a collaborative team of conventional researchers and community residents, selected survey measures including:  the Sense of Community Index (SCI) for social cohesion, and Health Status for overall health.  STATA was used to compare mean SCI and SCI subscale scores for participants who responded “excellent” or “very good” to “good”, “fair”, or “poor” to the general health question.  

Results:  T-test results indicated statistically significantly higher mean scores for the reinforcement of needs subscale for those in excellent/very good versusgood/fair/poor (t=-2.40; p=0.017).  Neither the overall SCI nor the other subscales were associated significantly with health status.  

Conclusions:  These preliminary analyses suggest a positive association between the reinforcement of needs subscale and health status. However, previous studies of social capital and mortality indicated multivariate adjustment and evaluation of effect modification may be appropriate to fully understand the relation between social cohesion and general health in this study. Future analyses will examine the possible role of age, cultural group, stress and other factors.