People thrive when they earn living wages and live in communities with parks and playgrounds, grocery stores selling nutritious food, and neighbors who know one another. Without a healthy environment, people are more likely to suffer from obesity or one of the many chronic diseases plaguing the United States: diabetes, asthma, and heart disease. Preventing disease and creating healthy neighborhoods requires change. Advocates from various fields are beginning to see how their work can enhance progress in other fields, and how their efforts can foster policy and environmental changes that help families and children lead healthier lives. In this webinar, we explored what it means to implement environmental and policy change strategies. Each panelists discussed innovative strategies they are implementing to create healthy communities. They touched on the successes and challenges to such efforts, and offered lessons learned.

Featured Speakers:

• Loel Solomon, Community Health Initiatives, Kaiser Permanente (powerpoint)
• Rajiv Bhatai, San Francisco Department of Public Health (powerpoint)
• Yael Lehmann, The Food Trust (powerpoint)

Health and place are inextricably linked. People are healthy when the places they live in support health. But the systems that shape communities and health are complex, from how food is grown, processed, distributed, and sold to how neighborhoods are built to the transportation systems that serve them. Creating healthy, equitable communities requires the broad expertise and influence of funders, advocates, and practitioners working across multiple fields to change these systems. This webinar explored the importance of engaging partners that extend beyond health. We heard about initiatives that involve collaboration across a broad spectrum of fields, including health, urban planning, transportation, food and sustainable agriculture, and community/economic development.

Featured Speakers:

• David D. Fukuzawa, Program Director, Kresge Foundation (powerpoint)
• Chetrice Gillon, Special Project Launch Manager, Detroit Department of Health and Wellness Promotion, Bureau of Substance, Prevention Treatment and Recovery (powerpoint)
• Jill Fuglister, Co-Director, Coalition for a Livable Future (powerpoint)

"Equity: Just and fair inclusion. An equitable society is one in which all can participate and prosper. The goals of equity must be to create conditions that allow all to reach their full potential. In short, equity creates a path from hope to change." - Angela Glover Blackwell, PolicyLink. Creating healthy places is critical to improving the overall health of Americans. Our neighborhoods must allow people the opportunity to make healthy decisions. Yet, not all places are created equal. Some neighborhoods have safe places for children to play outside, good schools and proximity to healthy food outlets like grocery stores and farmers markets. Other neighborhoods have only liquor stores, and lack sidewalks and parks to play in. Those neighborhoods lacking in healthy opportunities are where low-income people and communities of color live. They are also where people experience the worst health outcomes. Yet, all people should have the opportunity to live healthy lives. To create healthy people it's critical to focus on low-income people and communities of color whose environments often do not allow for healthy choices. In this session, participants learned how equity-based strategies and principles can form the basis of environmental policy change.

Featured Speakers:

• Angela Glover Blackwell, Founder and CEO, PolicyLink (no powerpoint)
• Linda Jo Doctor, Program Officer, The W.K. Kellogg Foundation (powerpoint)
• Robert Garcia, Founder and Executive Director, City Project (powerpoint)

Creating healthy places where people can be healthy requires broad-based policy and environmental change. Developing these changes requires effective communication with others about the importance of healthy, equitable communities. Social science research demonstrates specific techniques for successfully conveying messages. For example, for most people in the U.S., the starting point for change of any kind is at the individual level. But when audiences are reminded early in the communication of the influence environments have on health, they are receptive to messages about policies that can change those environments. This webinar addressed effective communication strategies to advance the reality of healthy people in healthy places. Panelists discussed framing, language and techniques to develop messages that can garner support for policies and environmental change strategies. Panelists specifically addressed the challenges of talking about equity.

Featured Speakers:

• Lori Dorfman, Berkeley Media Studies Group (powerpoint)
• Phil Steger, ISAIAH (powerpoint)

The majority of efforts to improve health focus on healthcare and programmatic and educational strategies. Yet, environmental and policy changes can create long-term sustainable opportunities for health. In the past several years, advocates from multiple fields across the country are implementing innovative projects to foster policy and environmental changes that help create healthy places where families and children can lead healthier lives. These strategies are fairly new, so how do we know if they are working? Ongoing tracking, measurement, and assessment can provide short-term feedback to guide and improve existing efforts. Evaluation can also help to identify effective strategies and tools for sustained use over the long term. In this webinar, panelists will discuss techniques for effectively evaluating policy and environmental change efforts to create healthy people in healthy places. It will also touch on strategy evaluation to promote equity and multi-field partnerships. Panelists will draw on specific evaluation examples and discuss challenges and lessons learned.

Featured Speakers:

• Dana Keener Mast, ICF Macro (powerpoint)
• Steven Ridini, Health Resources in Action (powerpoint)

Race to the Top - District Funding partnering with STRIVE and Promise Neighborhoods Institute.