Conditions in the communities where we live affect our health and opportunities. To ensure that residents who experience place-based inequities can lead healthy, prosperous lives, community investments are needed to dismantle factors that create unfair barriers to health. How can communities attract needed investments, and who will provide them?
In a new blog post published in Invest Health, Erik Calloway, managing director at ChangeLab Solutions, states that the types of investments needed are too varied to be funded by any one sector. While small and mid-sized cities may face greater economic barriers than large cities, "they are often nimbler in their ability to collaborate across government, with community partners, and with private investors to change how and where they focus their attention. This presents opportunities to effectively listen to and respond to changing community needs.”
In this article, Calloway offers solutions for driving policy decisions with equitable community engagement to effectively guide and incentivize private investment in health equity. “Meaningfully inclusive and equitable participation represents a fundamentally new approach to community engagement." Through this new approach, "multi-sector coalitions in small to midsized cities can build the public will necessary to impact systems change at the policy and practice level.”
Read the full article in Invest Health’s blog.
6/30/2023