Across the country, health and housing practitioners are setting a powerful course. Some are forming collaborations to tackle issues such as lead poisoning and asthma caused by substandard housing. Others are building awareness of the relationship between community trauma and housing development. Still others are pursuing policies that expand renter protections. Over the past two years, we have loved learning about your work and how institutional leaders are stepping up to ensure safe, stable, affordable, and well-connected housing in your communities.
Aimed at practitioners in public health departments, housing authorities, and hospitals, The Health & Housing Starter Kit is designed to help local institutions take their first steps toward creating bold, innovative health and housing initiatives. This guide provides case studies of 3 institutions that have been featured in our BLOCK Project dialogues: Bon Secours Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland; the Denver Housing Authority in Colorado; and the Alameda County Public Health Department in California. These institutions have been using housing initiatives to address community health for over 10 years, and lessons from their work are highlighted in the starter kit.
Based on the work at our case study sites, the starter kit provides practical guidance on how to form partnerships with communities and other institutions, develop indicators to understand and evaluate your efforts, and craft messages to build support.
We hope to continue our conversations with you about how you are using housing strategies to improve health in your communities. To learn more about our work, download some or all of the The Health & Housing Starter Kit, check out the healthy housing portfolio at ChangeLab Solutions.
Allison Allbee, MCP, MS Arch, and Saneta deVuono-powell, JD, MCP, are the curators of The BLOCK Project.