Rachel A. Davis, Managing Director, Prevention Institute

A new hope for good health is burgeoning in communities across California. There is a growing desire to better understand how health is impacted by elements in the community environment and how diverse sectors can begin working together to achieve meaningful community change.

The Good Health Counts Project promulgates a community health approach that expands the traditional understanding of health from an exclusively medical model to include the role of social and physical determinants that contribute to good health or detract from it. In November 2007, the Prevention Institute released Good Health Counts: A 21st Century Approach to Health and Community for California, with support from the California Endowment.  The report outlines a community health framework and provides tools for community groups, practitioners, advocates, government agencies, elected officials, and others to build capacity and support efforts in promoting community health.  Project efforts also focus on gaining a better understanding about how various sectors can contribute to community health efforts and identifying additional tools and resources to meet the needs of different communities.  

The Good Health Counts report describes:

• A new framework for community health.
• The interdisciplinary nature of community health and the diverse sectors that should be engaged in the process of promoting health.
• A synthesis of nearly 100 community report cards and indicator reports that describes the community level process of evaluating factors that affect health.
• Tools for identifying the factors in your community that promote or detract from health.

Goals of the project include:

• Expand the traditional understanding of health and increase interest in the impact of community factors.
• Outreach to both traditional health partners as well as non-traditional partners to understand their role in promoting community health.
• Assess the needs of different sectors to inform the refinement of the community health framework and potential tools and resources. 

California has a history of innovative and forward-thinking solutions. In order to lead the way with good health, community solutions to addressing the diverse determinants of health must be part of the answer.

The report, Good Health Counts: A 21st Century Approach to Health and Community for California, is available free of charge at: http://www.preventioninstitute.org/hdpubs.html. For more information, please contact Program Coordinator Linnea Ashley, MPH, at Linnea@preventioninstitute.org or (510) 444-7738.