Collaborating for healthy, equitable communities

Public health professionals recognize the impact of social determinants of health in communities. To work toward health equity and address SDOH, public health needs to work collaboratively across sectors. This is often easier said than done, though.

Understanding who to connect with and how to move joint initiatives forward can be challenging. That’s why a coalition of eight public health, design and planning organizations, including APHA, has released a set of 10 conversation guides. The new guides highlight successful cross-disciplinary collaborations for healthy, equitable communities. 

The conversation guides build on core values from the Joint Call to Action to Promote Healthy Communities, which provides a framework for effective local, state and regional collaboration on the built environment.

The guides feature case studies from across the country — including California, Colorado, Kentucky, Indiana and Washington, D.C. — and examine the keys to their success and lessons learned.

The guides share work on a range of topics, from biking infrastructure and park design to stormwater flooding and alley revitalization, and share how partners worked together to address them.

Each guide includes conversational questions that public health, design, planning and other professionals can use to kick-start collaboration in their communities.

“We hope that these guides will encourage public health professionals to work with planners, architects and engineers to build and support healthy, equitable communities,” said Kate Robb, APHA’s senior program manager for environmental health. “We can’t do this work alone.”  

Access the new guides on APHA’s healthy community design page.