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Community Health

Recognizing that individual health and the health of the community and environment are interrelated, the Governor’s Task Force for Healthy Carolinians established the Community Health Committee to develop healthy community goals for North Carolina for the Year 2010. This committee is charged with identifying the essential components of a healthy and safe community necessary to support quality of life for all residents. The underlying philosophy is that health is created and supported where people live, worship, learn, work, and play.

The work of this committee is different from the other committees of the Governor’s Task Force that have been studying individual health and safety issues that relate to personal well being. The Community Health Committee has looked at community systems, infrastructures, organizations, and policies as they relate to the broad determinants of health, safety, lifestyles, and quality of life.

Defining a Healthy and Safe Community

The Community Health Committee recommends that the Governor’s Task Force for Healthy Carolinians endorse the World Health Organization definition of a healthy community. A healthy community is "…one that is safe with affordable housing and accessible transportation systems, provides work for all who want to work, has a healthy and safe environment with a sustainable ecosystem, and offers access to health care services which focus on disease prevention and staying healthy."

A healthy and safe community "strives to provide a thriving economy and opportunities for individuals and families while adequately addressing public health, medical care, and other essential needs of its population. In addition, a healthy community demonstrates an element of interconnectedness…linking public, private, and nonprofit sectors to address the underlying causes of poor health."

— Healthy People in Healthy Communities: A Guide for Community Leaders, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, Office of Public Health and Science, Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.

A healthy and safe community promotes the concept that there are resources and assets within the community that can be built and enhanced to support all community members, neighborhoods, schools, churches, worksites, and quality government. A healthy community has engaged community members and leaders who work collaboratively with agencies and organizations, churches, schools, and business to address broad community issues and concerns.

Components of a Healthy and Safe Community

The primary purpose of a healthy and safe community is to improve the quality of life of all residents. The following list represents nine essential components that the Community Health Committee has identified as fundamental for community health and safety. The list describes the components that represent basic life supports that are essential to survival, as well as building blocks to achieve a healthy and safe community. These components have a profound effect on the health and safety of the individual as well as the health of the larger community. If these components are weak, the health and safety of the individuals and the community are compromised.

Each of the components embraces the overarching Healthy People 2010 goals: 1) Increase the quality and years of healthy life and 2) Eliminate health disparities. Additionally, each of the components addresses the need to eliminate racism and discrimination.

Critical to achieving these components, each community must engage a Healthy Carolinians Task Force (community-based, public-private partnership) that is committed to a community vision that includes:

Integrated and coordinated services

Leadership, governance, health producing policies, advocacy

Engaged and informed citizens

Political accountability

Community pride

Essential Components for Community Health and Safety

The following list of essential components for a healthy and safe community covers the spectrum of everyday life. Each essential component is defined by a goal. These components are directly related to the quality of life that a community resident experiences each day. A community would use this list to understand its strengths and challenges. This list of essential components and goals will help a community determine where resources, policy, commitment, and community energy need to be invested to assure the health and safety for all community members.

A healthy and safe community is characterized by the following:

1. Access to quality health care
Goal: Improve access to quality clinical preventive services, effective primary care, effective dental care, education about modifiable risk factors, disease management, financial access to prescription drugs for older adults, and rehabilitative and long-term care to realize the full potential of primary, and secondary prevention.

2. Economic opportunities
Goal: Eliminate income inequalities among different segments of the population and ensure that all communities have a healthy, viable, and sustainable economy and individual members have the opportunity to participate fully in work and production.

3. Education
Goal: Provide lifelong educational opportunities for all citizens to enable them to have job security and enjoy a productive life.

4. Environmental health
Goal: Assure air quality, water quality, and soil quality in a clean environment for a healthy community and to assure that no resident is exposed to harmful substances in the air, soil, or water.

5. Food security
Goal: Assure that all residents of a community have access at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life.

6. Health promotion
Goal: Increase support and opportunities for community members to engage in healthy lifestyle behaviors within and across institutions, organizations, and businesses. (This essential component includes community-wide: physical fitness and recreation, nutrition and healthy diet, tobacco cessation, injury prevention, substance abuse prevention).

7. Housing
Goal: Provide affordable housing for low-income populations that meets minimum building code standards, including indoor plumbing, potable water, adequate wastewater disposal, electricity; and is free of environmental contaminants.

8. Safe and secure community
Goal: Provide a safe and secure community that supports mutual respect for all residents and property and contributes to improving the quality of everyone’s life. (This essential component includes: public safety infrastructure, law enforcement, fire safety, crime reduction, intentional injury prevention)

9. Transportation
Goal: Improve transportation for people without cars or other means of transportation (targeting seniors and under-age drivers), to integrate growth and development with sound transportation policy, and to improve air quality that is threatened by cars and trucks.

The Community Health Committee of the Governor’s Task for Healthy Carolinians is developing a workbook to support community action in these areas. This workbook will continue to develop the goals and present measurable objectives. Strategies for each essential component of a Healthy Community will be included. The workbook will be available in 2001. These essential components are presented in the North Carolina 2010 Health Objectives to begin the process of connecting individual health to the health of the community. For more information about this forthcoming workbook, contact the Office of Healthy Carolinians/Health Education, Division of Public Health, NC Department of Health and Human Services, 1915 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC 27699-1915; (919) 715-4173.


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