Strategies: Civic Health

Engage professional or lay health workers to provide education, referral and follow-up, case management, home visiting, etc. for those who experience barriers in accessing health care; also called promotoras(es) de salud or community health representatives

Establish and support land that is gardened or cultivated by community members via community land trusts, gardening education, zoning regulation changes, or service provision (e.g., water or waste disposal)

Require developers to reserve a proportion of housing units for residents with low incomes via mandatory requirements or incentives, such as density bonuses

Establish a framework to increase walking and biking trails and improve connectivity of non-auto paths and trails in a particular area

Acquire, hold, manage, and develop properties such as vacant lots, abandoned buildings, or foreclosures, and transition them to productive uses, often affordable housing developments

Purchase the land a home is on to lease to homeowners with low and middle incomes and require homeowners to sell the home back to the trust or to another resident with low income upon moving

Increase green space through new parks or open spaces, renovation or enhancement of under-used recreation areas, rehabilitation of vacant lots, brownfields, etc.

Provide funding for local community development activities such as affordable housing, anti-poverty programs, and infrastructure development

Support individual and group use of internet-based tools to receive news, communicate or share information, collaborate on ideas, mobilize networks, and make collective decisions

Provide youth with leadership building opportunities, often through social activities such as advocacy groups, peer education, youth-led participatory research, and local government youth advisory councils and boards