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B
THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT: "By the built environment, we mean that part of the physical environment made by people for people, including buildings, transportation systems, and open spaces" (Northridge 558). It also includes the remainder of the physical environment, the natural environment, which consists of parks and waterways modified by people. Since the natural environments are essential for all people, not just those in urban areas, the natural environment is the background for the public health framework. Therefore, the built environment is the foreground in the context of joint urban and public health framework.
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C
COMMUNITY: A group of people who live and interact based on economic transactions, social relationships and environmental interdependence within a specific geographic region
COMMUNITY-LEVEL SOCIAL INDICATOR: A social indicator that can be collected, reported and meaningfully interpreted for geopolitical units such as neighborhoods, towns or cities, metropolitan areas, or regions
COMMUNITY-LEVEL SOCIAL INDICATOR SYSTEM: An assemblage of community-level social indicators based on data from numerous sources used to promote a community’s long life and good physical and mental health
COMMUNITY HEALTH: An organized effort to promote health, prevent disease and prolong life within a population through activities aimed at improving local conditions, enabling citizens to participate in public decision making, and increasing the strength and effectiveness of communities
CULTURE AND RECREATION: Prevailing Community Norms, Customs and Processes.
Participation and involvement in social, community and civic activities, including history, the arts, literature, music, sport and recreation, print, radio and television, galleries, festivals and events, and exhibitions, contribute to a person’s good physical and mental health. By promoting social solidarity and understanding across diverse groups, supporting community centers for socialization, recognizing multicultural beliefs and customs, and strengthening democratic norms and equal voice and influence for all community members, communities benefit as cohesive and well-working entities.
Indicators within the Culture and Recreation Domain include the number of people using recreation facilities each month, community centers per person, funding amounts and sources for recreation facilities, city parks/recreation expenditures per capita, public participation in the arts, the number of arts events/performances at public sites, and public library materials per capita.
CULTURAL ENVIRONMENT: Cultural institutions, beliefs, history and values in place within a community pertaining to the community’s norms, customs and processes
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D
DOMAINS OF COMMUNITY HEALTH: The categories that each includes conceptual sets of social indicators, which are markers for determining the life years and physical and mental health of a community
DATA LINKS: Clickable, Web access to local, community level data in report or raw/downloadable form.
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E
ECONOMY: Financial system of the labor market.
Individual income contributes to economic well-being; therefore, economic well-being remains a critical component of a person's overall quality of life and good physical and mental health. Trends in income, wages, employment, wealth, poverty, and taxes also demonstrate a community’s level of economic productivity, development and progress.
Indicators for communities include the labor market income, personal income per capita, hours of paid work, hourly wages, hourly benefits, manufacturing productivity, number of business establishments, value of residential and business property, per capita gross state product as percent of U.S. GNP, total dollars and dollars per capita deposited in local banks, gross state product rate of increase vs. N.E. GSP rate of increase, and the cost of living index
EDUCATION: The opportunities for learning and developing capacity
Education provides that communities will have an informed and educated work force. Years of formal education are strongly related to age-adjusted mortality and result in a community’s higher quality of life.
Indicators for communities include Early childhood education literacy rates, Access to education, High school dropout rate, High school graduate rate, Percentage of population with high school diploma, Percentage of adults with associate’s, bachelor’s or graduate’s degrees, College students, Adult literacy rates, Nursery education, number of children attending pre-school, Achievement Test Scores, Percent of districts with mean test scores equal/above state average, and Percent of districts with graduation rate above state average
EMPLOYMENT: Work and workplaces in the context of broader societal conditions. Employment pays a key role in determining an individual’s quality of life within a community. A successful and productive community strives to achieve high levels of labor force participation by increasing job opportunities and enhancing job training.
Indicators for communities include the employment rate (full/part time), unemployment rate, long term unemployment rate, labor force participation, percent of adults (15-64) receiving unemployment insurance (UI) benefits, percent of post-secondary graduates finding employment in their field, and total wage and salary jobs.
ENVIRONMENT: Our environment has a direct impact on our health. The environment can be broken down into four different types, social, cultural, built and natural, which all interact together having a direct impact on our health.
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H
HEALTH: "A state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity" (World Health Organization)
HEALTH CARE: The value of health care within a community directly affects the quality of life each individual member of the community attains. Therefore, achieving a high level of health care coverage, access and quality remains essential and vital to a community’s success, growth and well-being. Ways to promote long life and increase the status of physical or mental health include defining community goals, supporting safe and satisfying living conditions, providing health education in communities, promoting culturally appropriate health services, making health care accessible, promoting health and disease prevention through school settings, promoting health and disease prevention through the workplace, monitoring community health through sentinel health indicators, and following the recommended health and safety behaviors (tobacco avoidance, alcohol moderation, seatbelt usage, moderate physical activity, adequate sleep).
Indicators for communities consist of total health care expenditures, percent of people reporting fair to poor health, drug, alcohol and tobacco use (substance abuse), youth suicide, adolescent drug use, addiction rate (tobacco, alcohol, drug use), violent crime rate, recommended health and safety behaviors rate, percent of population who smoke, percent of population covered by health insurance, deaths per 100,000 population ages 0-64, overweight and obesity, responsible sexual behavior, immunization, access to health care, injury and violence, and physical activity.
Also, Health Promotion, Disease and Injury Prevention and Healthcare.
HOUSING: Neighborhood Living Conditions.
A good marker for communities includes its homeownership rate, which defined as the percentage of residences that are owner occupied compared to the total number of residences indicates how well families are doing financially and the degree to which opportunities for homeownership are available to all. An increase in homeownership rates indicates that poverty rates are declining, therefore it would help to increase investment and pride in neighborhoods, and help to improve lower income areas of the City. Other Housing indicators consist of overcrowding, a lack of plumbing facilities, poverty, homelessness, number of homeless people, average annual vacancy rate, number of people using homeless shelters, and new home construction rate
Ways to improve Quality of Life and Social-Well-Being include making housing affordable, increased housing quality and safety, making neighborhoods safer, building, improving and retaining neighborhood assets, and enhancing neighborhood cohesion and social support systems.
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INDICATOR: A measurable entity, which conveys a part or an aspect of health and well-being.
INFRASTRUCTURE: Civic Participation and Political Influence: Social Cohesion, Civic Engagement and Collective Efficacy.
Adequate community member participation enables communities to grow and attract businesses.
Markers for Communities include public infrastructure value per capita, social infrastructure, which consists of health safety and education, voting rates, voter registration, political party membership, community organizations, unions, advocacy groups, and governmental funding (revenue, debt). By increasing civic engagement in communities, increasing social engagement in communities, and building community infrastructure to increase local decision making, the quality of life of a community improves.
INDIVIDUAL LEVEL HEALTH: Personal health. Particularized component of public health focused on the personal behaviors of the individual as affected by the community and national levels.
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MACRO LEVEL HEALTH: A broad, ecological, and sometimes national picture of public health.
MATERNAL AND CHILD HEALTH: Care of mothers and the young.
Community level indicators for Maternal and Child Health include infant mortality, life expectancy at birth, low birth-weight infants, percent of women receiving adequate prenatal care, healthy babies, child abuse, child poverty, family structure, asthma hospitalization rate for children, breast cancer deaths per 100,000 women, number of children without health insurance, births to unwed mothers, substance-exposed newborns per 1,000 live births, adolescent pregnancy rate, births to females under 18 per 1,000 live births, and births to mothers without 12 years of education.
MESO LEVEL HEALTH: Measures of health taken at the community level, intermediate to macro and micro level health.
MICRO LEVEL HEALTH: Measures of health taken at the individual level, contrasted with meso and macro level health.
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NATURAL ENVIRONMENT: The Physical Environment.
The Natural Environment consists of all natural resources, topography, climate, water supply. Environmental management takes account of monitoring water quality near city landfills, managing remediation projects at city sites where contamination may exist, and promoting environmental initiatives such as recycling programs and air quality programs with other agencies. By designing and implementing energy management and conservation programs in city facilities, by purchasing waste-stream reducing products and environmentally friendly products and by collaborating with other departments on various environmental projects communities improve their overall community health. Providing and promoting mass transit services, using compressed natural gas for buses, constructing bike and pedestrian pathways, alleviating traffic congestion through roadway and intersection improvements and signal synchronization, and monitoring storm water quality are also numerous ways in which a community can have a positive impact on their health status through a direct correlation to their natural environment.
Ways for communities to promote their quality of life and improve the physical and mental health of their members consist of using less water by installing low-flow showers, using a drip system for watering plants, turning off the faucet during teeth brushing, collecting rainwater off the roof for use during dry times, planting low water use trees and foliage, and only using dishwashers and washing machines when they are full. Communities should encourage their citizens to drive less, reduce the amount of products they buy that have a lot of packaging or are not recycled or recyclable, and to Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. Waste disposed of in the landfill can produce leachate, a toxin which may contaminate groundwater; therefore, being environmentally conscious increases the longevity of a community’s life.
Markers and indicators for communities include air quality, which consists of outdoor air quality (exhaust, ozone, pollutants, particulate matter) and indoor air quality (tobacco, insect, mold, dust); water quality (PCB’s, dioxin); land/water use/waste rate (solid waste management- following federal, state, and local environmental regulations in the operation of landfills, using synthetic liners for future landfills, and managing landfill gas to protect the ozone layer; per capita water consumption; hazardous waste; food quality; values of key natural resources; waste disposal/dumping/sanitation services; and curbside recycling programs.
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ORGANIZATIONS: Advocates for Community Health and those interested in improving community health or responsible for public health improvement.
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P
POPULATION: The total number of members within a given community.
PUBLIC HEALTH: An organized effort to promote health, prevent disease and prolong life for all.
PUBLIC SAFETY: Keeping the community safe and secure.
Neighborhoods should be safe and fostering environments for children to live in.
Indicators for communities include the crime rate, deaths from all accidents per 100,000 populations, juvenile crime rate, violence crime rate, homicide rate per 100,000, rapes reported per 10,000 population, domestic assault reported per 100,000 population, average rescue call response time, and emergency calls per capita.
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QUALITY OF LIFE: The level of physical and social functioning and the measure of a person's health and well-being of life style, including participation in social, community, and civic activities, personal development and happiness, and relationships with other people.
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REFERENCES: Sources for data (by special request), methods, conceptualizations about community health, collected data, developed methods and models (example: Mary Northridge).
RESOURCES: Other Web sites with many community health data links, references, or organizations.
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S
SOCIAL DETERMINANTS OF HEALTH: Societal conditions that affect both the health of an individual and the community and by which social and health policies can potentially modify the health status with developed programs
SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS: Cultural and religious institutions, economic systems, and political structures.
SURROUNDINGS: Neighborhoods, workplaces, towns, cities and built environment.
SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS: An individual's position in social hierarchy, differential treatment of social groups and social networks.
SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT: Genetic and biologic processes, individual behaviors, and the context within which people live create the Social Environment. According to The Community Guide’s Model for Linking the Social Environment to Health, the social determinants of health are "societal conditions that affect health and can potentially be altered by social and health policies and programs" (12).
SOCIAL INDICATOR: A measure reflecting the status of the population and "contextual influences" (social, political, economic, ecological factors) known to affect health and well-being at a particular time of over a period of time (natural, social and built environments, the economy, education and literacy, culture and recreation, health, public services, poverty, employment…), present evidence of problems related to human well-being.
SOCIAL HEALTH: The ability to interact effectively with other people and the social environment in a dynamic state influenced by circumstances, behaviors and environments.
SOCIAL WELL-BEING: The needs, interests and wants of a group or community are met.
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TRANSPORTATION: Transportation Systems of mass transit, roads, highways, air travel.
One aspect of the Transportation Domain includes the markers for mass transit and public transportation, which consists of the following indicators: miles of fixed-route bus service, annual transit rider-ship per capita, public expenditure on public transit, cost per transit-rider trip, percentage of transit service miles to total street miles, and transportation for special needs groups. Other transportation indicators incorporate the condition of roads, street repair, destinations with direct flights in/out of airport, weekday commercial flights in/out airport, CO2 emissions from transportation, public expenditure on private transportation, cars per capita, carpooling, and transportation safety, including seat belt use, helmet use, age curfews, speed restriction/enforcement, and driving with intoxicated laws/enforcement. One way to promote good physical and mental health of the community is to increase use of mass transit to relieve traffic congestion.
TAXONOMY OF COMMUNITY HEALTH: Hierarchal and organized levels of a community’s health status beginning with the broad, generalized picture, including the domains, and then narrowing its field of focus to social indicators of community health.
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VITAL STATISTICS: Systematically charted information about births, marriages, divorces, and deaths collected about individuals and aggregated to community, state, region or national levels.
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WELL-BEING, INDIVIDUAL: The needs, interests and wants of an individual are met at personal, community and national levels
WELL-BEING: The state of being contented, healthy, or prosperous.
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