Online Program

331579
Public Health and Community Development: Using an Evaluation of Three Health Impact Assessments to Create a Toolkit for Fostering Future Collaboration between Sectors


Tuesday, November 3, 2015 : 10:30 a.m. - 10:50 a.m.

James E. Dills, MUP, MPH, Georgia Health Policy Center, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA
Michelle Rushing, MPH, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University, Georgia Health Policy Center, Atlanta, GA
Elizabeth Fuller, DrPH, Georgia Health Policy Center, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA
Community development includes a wide range of activities that influence multiple determinants of health and quality of life. Health Impact Assessment (HIA) can play a key role in improving health in these communities by providing a context for cross-sector collaboration between two fields that are often working on similar issues, but from separate perspectives. In 2013, the Health Impact Project funded three community development-focused HIAs and an overarching evaluation of lessons learned from those three projects. This session focuses on those lessons learned and the resulting Community Development and HIA toolkit (to be released in summer 2015). The three HIAs analyzed different aspects of community development: neighborhood-level sustainability planning in Hartford, Connecticut; state-level affordable housing policy in Georgia; and a state-level funding program for community development corporations in Massachusetts. The evaluation, led by the Georgia Health Policy Center, determined what aspects of the HIA process and findings were useful, what was redundant or peripheral to the developers’ needs, and how the process could be streamlined to make it easier and more efficient for community developers to integrate health considerations into their work. Topic areas covered in the evaluation and toolkit include poverty mitigation, community services, economic development, affordable housing, place-based revitalization or stabilization, and community organizing. Using a Health in All Policies approach that engaged community development stakeholders in the development of the toolkit and valued their perspectives avoided “health imperialism” and resulted in a tool valued by end users in both the community development and public health sectors.

Learning Areas:

Conduct evaluation related to programs, research, and other areas of practice
Other professions or practice related to public health
Public health or related public policy

Learning Objectives:
Describe the connections between community development and HIA practice. Define how the Community Development and HIA Toolkit could help facilitate collaboration in their own work

Keyword(s): Community Development

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am an experienced HIA practitioner and led the evaluation and toolkit development considered in this abstract.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.