Breathing Easy from Home to School: Fighting the Environmental Triggers of Childhood Asthma, a new report released by PolicyLink and The California Endowment lays out a plan for what we all can do to make our children’s air safer and healthier. The report provides a blueprint for dramatically reducing the community factors that contribute to asthma development and spark asthma attacks.
Designed for Disease: the Link Between Local Food Environments and Obesity and Diabetes, a study by PolicyLink, the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, and the California Center for Public Health Advocacy examines the correlation between the health of nearly 40,000 Californian's and the mix of retail food outlets near their homes. The key finding: people living in neighborhoods crowded with fast-food and convenience stores but relatively few grocery or produce outlets are at significantly higher risk of suffering from obesity and diabetes.
Click here to view a "Detailed Methodology" and click here for a one-pager of "Policy Recommendations" based on the study.
Delivering Equitable Development to a Recovering Louisiana: A State Policy Guide for 2008 and Beyond, a policy guide that l ooks deeply at the following four principles: the integration of strategies that support people while improving places; the reduction of disparities between neighborhoods, localities, and across regions; promotion of double bottom line investments that offer financial return to investors and economic and social benefits to residents; and full and meaningful community voice, participation, and leadership. It illustrates how these principles can positively impact the rebuilding and recovery efforts throughout the state.
Bringing Louisiana Renters Home: An Evaluation of the 2006-2007 Gulf Opportunity Zone Rental Housing Restoration Program , a PolicyLink report, shows how barely two in five renters can return to affordable homes. The report evaluates rental program outcomes, cites current challenges and threats facing rental developments, and makes recommendations to meet challenges and achieve intended housing goals.
Why Place Matters: Building the Movement for Healthy Communities
Where you live determines how well you live; and available resources are not equally distributed. Communities of color and low-income communities face harmful community environments, such as poverty, toxins, or economic disinvestment, that compromise individual and community health. The framework described in this report provides a way to understand the relationship between community conditions and health, analyzes the connections among all the environmental factors that contribute to a healthy community, and identifies environmental effects on community health.
The Impact of the Built Environment on Health
The way we plan, shape and create our urban environment impacts the health of the people who live, work, play and move through these communities. The symptoms of poorly planned neighborhoods are often poor health outcomes. Communities of color and low-income communities face disproportionally greater health impacts related to poor land use planning. There is an effort, by the field of public health, to integrate health considerations into planning and land use to yield improved health outcomes. This report provides both a framework for understanding the necessary elements for building a movement for policy change and better planning, as well as numerous illustrations of innovative practices, projects and networks of advocates and professionals.
Delivering on the Promise of Inclusionary Housing: Best Practices in Administration and Monitoring,(pdf) outlines several of the most common tasks associated with ongoing administration of inclusionary housing programs and describes some of the common approaches to staffing and paying for implementation. It also lists a number of program profiles where inclusionary zoning has been implemented.
Safety, Growth, and Equity: Parks and Open Spaces, provides a brief history of the city park movement and its intersection with the community gardening movement. It shows how planners began to incorporate park elements in their attempts to create vibrant downtowns and walkable neighborhoods. Additionally, the report identifies promising practices for community participation in policy and programming; instituting standards, measurements, and assessments; targeting resources to high-need areas; increasing funding overall; and the efficient and creative use of existing community assets as well as alternatives to new land acquisitions. Safety, Growth, and Equity: School Facilities, examines how aging infrastructure and a growing population have led to a critical need to modernize old schools and address school construction and maintenance disparities in low-income communities. Safety, Growth, and Equity: Transportation, explores equitable transportation policies and investments, looking at how local and regional governments play the lead role in financing the construction and maintenance of our transportation infrastructure, with the federal government playing a smaller, but nevertheless significant, role via subsidies.
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By focusing on programs for job training, housing, transportation and community revitalization partnerships, the brief seeks to show how these strategies can help both working families and the businesses that give them a hand. Though the brief does offer some Philadelphia-specific policy recommendations, it also focuses on broader strategies that are applicable in most areas of the country, such as: creating a state innovation fund for incumbent training and career pathway programs, Increasing state and federal commuter benefits, providing local matching funds and state and federal tax credits for employer-assisted housing, and establishing state tax credits for revitalization partnerships. Grow Newark: Building Newark's Economy by Investing in Minority and Women-Owned Small Businesses, a policy brief that examines the challenges facing women-and minority-owned businesses (or "minorityowned business enterprises (MBE)) in Newark. The brief examines current hurdles facing the business community in Newark and provides recommendations based on best practices that have been proved successful in other cities. Buy Newark: Adopting a Comprehensive Buy-Local Strategy for the City of Newark, a policy brief which outlines various recommendations to better steer a portion of the enormous purchasing power in Newark toward local, small, and minority- and women-owned businesses which can result in substantial local economic impacts that would benefit a broad and deep cross-section of Newark residents. |
(Download the complete report by clicking on the title above.) |
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This PolicyLink report, shows barely two in five renters can return to affordable homes. The report evaluates rental program outcomes, cites current challenges and threats facing rental developments, and makes recommendations to meet the challenges and achieve intended housing goals. (Download the complete report by clicking on the title above.) |
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Why is there an innovation divide in the nonprofit sector? What is it about this sector that makes the use and adoption of information and communications technologies (ICTs) particularly difficult? Included in this report are the results of an investigation along with a five-part agenda which answers these questions and offers solutions for what can be done to speed up the diffusion of innovations within the nonprofit sector. This report also profiles twelve innovators that employ four technology practices —neighborhood information systems, electronic advocacy, Internet-based microenterprise support, and digital inclusion initiatives—to strenghten the capacity of communities for advocacy, knowledge-sharing, and economic development. more... |
The Internet has fundamentally changed the face of advocacy. Organizations are arming themselves with technology tools to mobilize constituents, advance their issues, support political candidates, and engage individuals in the political and policymaking process. This new Internet-based approach to advocacy—electronic advocacy (e-advocacy)—is a multifaceted process that uses an array of technology tools, tailored to an organization's specific campaign goals. Click Here for Change: Your Guide to the E-Advocacy Revolution features technology tips to help organizations and coalitions strengthen their offline advocacy tactics; target decision-makers to pass or defeat a proposed change; connect with "hard to reach" communities; organize for mass mobilization; track online activity to identify strong supporters; and reach out to more supporters for online donations. more... |
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Infrastructure—transit, schools and colleges, roads, water systems, parks, telecommunications networks—is the backbone of strong, healthy communities and regions. Population growth, resource-intensive development patterns, new technology requirements of a changing economy, and several decades of underinvestment have created a large backlog of infrastructure projects in urban, suburban, and rural areas across the country—and over the next two decades, even more new infrastructure projects and upgrades will be needed to keep communities running. In a policy and budget system of fierce competition for limited public funds, decisions about how and where to allocate infrastructure dollars literally shape our communities and affect access to economic opportunity more ... |
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As information technology (IT) has become nearly universal in workplaces, skills in IT are increasingly becoming the focus of many new jobs and, more broadly, a precondition for progress in the knowledge-based U.S. and global economies. For many workers, however, lack of skills, post-secondary degrees, and connections leave them trapped in dead-end, low-paying jobs. However, a low-wage future is not invevitable for disadvantaged groups. Innovative community-based organizations play an important role in making the transition possible for many of those whom the educational system has failed, providing crucial job training programs that help workers cross the digital divide. Moving Beyond the Divide: Workforce Development and Upward Mobility in Information Technology – a Policy Brief outlines the context for IT workforce development, analyzes the role of community-based training programs, and concludes with policy implications for the employment training field. more ... |
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Older core cities are primarily located in the Northeast and Midwest and are often referred to as rust belt, weak markets, slow growth, or undercapitalized cities. They face significant obstacles to a sustainable future and are struggling to reposition themselves in the face of a changing economy and the movement of people and resources out of urban centers to other parts of the region, the country, or overseas. This report explores the opportunities and challenges confronting older core cities by looking closely at five of them: Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh and answers questions about how older core cities can become economically competitive and socially inclusive places where all residents can participate and prosper. more ... |
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This report summarizes discussions—from a convening of some of the country's leading researchers and community practitioners—on how to conduct collaborative, community-focused research, how to build public will and legislative action, and how to highlight new dimensions of health disparities and place-based factors. |
Market Creek Plaza: Toward Resident Ownership of Neighborhood Change , Spring 2005 This case study highlights the planning, design, and implementation process of Market Creek Plaza, a 10-acre mixed-use, resident-planned commercial and cultural development in the historically disinvested Diamond Neighborhoods of San Diego. more ... |
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One necessity of good health is being able to easily buy and eat fresh fruits, vegetables, and other healthy foods. All too often, however, healthy food options are limited—or completely unavailable—in low-income communities. This lack of local access to healthy, affordable food affects what people eat and ultimately threatens both individual and community vitality—residents risk obesity and other poor health conditions, and communities suffer. more ... |
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Over a million California schoolchildren—predominantly from low-income families and communities of color—attend severely overcrowded schools. Yet school construction resources are too often diverted to newer schools in suburban or exurban communities, bypassing critically overcrowded urban or inner-ring suburban schools that typically lack vacant land for expansion or local funding sources. Ending School Overcrowding in California: Building Quality Schools for All Children explores California’s overcrowding relief initiatives and proposes policy recommendations for fair and equitable distribution of school construction funds. more ... |
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Improving
the health system can reduce the effects of health
disparities,
but it can do little to eliminate them. An upsurge
in new research is documenting the impact of physical,
social, and economic environmental factors: air quality,
housing conditions, racism, relationship to community
institutions, and neighborhood economic conditions,
all of which affect health status over time. A combined
focus on community and the policies that affect communities’ environments
presents opportunities for altering and ameliorating
the underlying forces at the heart of the determinants
of health. This Perspective presents examples of successful
community involvement and policy change. |
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The regional equity movement seeks to ensure that all communities can participate in and benefit from economic growth and activity throughout each metropolitan region. This includes being able to access quality affordable housing, good schools, living wage jobs, public transit, open space, and healthy foods. more ... |
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California is currently facing its greatest housing crisis ever. Expanding Opportunity: New Resources to Meet California’s Housing Needs makes the case for a dedicated source of funding for California’s housing trust fund and provides a menu of viable options. The report draws from interviews with over 50 key experts in state housing policy, industry, tax, and budget issues. It presents an in-depth economic analysis and surveys best practices of housing trust funds across the nation to show how such funding can stabilize affordable housing opportunities across the state’s diverse communities. more ... |
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The first step in making change is to recognize the need for it. The second is to know how to make it happen. Advocating for Equitable Development describes the process for moving from recognition to resolution and demystifies the process for achieving economic and social equity in low-income communities and communities of color throughout the nation. more ... |
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Public debates on the lagging health status of people of color often focus on the need for better access to health care. This is certainly an unmet need, but something else is needed as well if lingering health disparities are to end: a simultaneous focus on community environments. more ... |
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Asthma ranks among the most prevalent diseases suffered disproportionately by people of color. Most current strategies to reduce asthma focus on its clinical management, but the alarming rates of asthma among African Americans and Latinos will not decline until communities organize to reduce the toxins that exacerbate this debilitating condition. more ... |
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Judith
Bell, "Learning to Lobby: Steps to Successful Legislative Advocacy,"
Race, Poverty & the Environment: A Journal for Social and Environmental
Justice, Fall 2003. |
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updated May 2008 |
Building a Better New Orleans: Hope Needs Help
Bringing Louisiana Renters Home: An Evaluation of the 2006-2007 Gulf Opportunity Zone Rental Housing Restoration Program 
Community Mapping: Using Geographic Data for
Neighborhood Revitalization, November 2002
