On the Path to Health Equity: Building Capacity to Measure Health Outcomes in Community Development
Health outcomes are impacted by many factors, including community safety, access to good health care, air and water quality and housing among others, all of which can vary greatly depending on where someone is from. This has led to drastic health inequities across the United States. To help tackle inequities associated with the these indicators, often referred to as Social Determinants of Health (SDoH), community development are increasingly partnering with health care institutions to strategize on how best to improve the conditions that are most often associated with poor health outcomes.
To help quantify the need and potential impact of these partnerships, there is a growing demand for evidence showcasing the benefits of programs aimed at improving health outcomes through these interventions. This new report from Enterprise Community Partners and NeighborWorks highlights findings from the Health Outcomes Demonstration Project pilot, which equipped 20 affordable housing and community development organization with the ability to evaluate health outcomes across several program.
The project shares findings based on the experience of several organizations moving along a continuum of learning to help them better understand and evaluate their role in improving health outcomes for their residents or clients. These learnings and experiences have been distilled into a framework, which includes strategies to help practitioners in four buckets: understanding and connecting with residents, measuring and improving, preparing and committing and finally partnering and transforming.
Readers of the report will be better equipped to advocate for these cross-sector partnerships, and to improve health outcomes for neighborhood residents.
