Designing Healthy Places and Socially Connected Communities

PRACTICE

Designing Healthy Places and Socially Connected Communities

Using the framework and values promoted in the Black Health Bill of Rights, the Council on Black Health works alongside partners to create socially connected and healthy places that uplift health, dignity, equity, and belonging in Black communities. We engage neighborhood leaders and identify opportunities to strengthen social connection with changes to systems, policies, or public spaces in communities.

Our Partners

Overview

Meaningful social connections are a basic human need, and strong social connections can boost a person’s survival by 50% and enhance their quality of life. Well-designed and socially connected communities, with spaces and conditions that bring people together and create a sense of belonging, improve the health and well-being of residents. In turn, people who live in these communities feel safe, trust one another, and have better mental, physical, and emotional health outcomes.

Yet, Black communities throughout the country face a long history of gentrification, racial exclusion, segregation, and discriminatory policies that have created great harm. Black people who already experience other health disparities, marginalization, othering, and oppression become at risk of social isolation and loneliness through the erosion of social cohesion. Examples of how systematic racism, rooted in community design, has harmed Black communities include:

Taking steps to address social isolation must happen at the system and community levels and not be treated as a personal issue. Alongside our partners, we provide resources to neighborhoods to reclaim their power and shape their community’s future. By creating socially connected communities, we not only create places for people to connect meaningfully; we improve residents’ health outcomes.

This project introduced neighborhood teams to the Council on Black Health’s Black Health Bill of Rights and Healthy Places by Design’s Socially Connected Communities: Solutions to Social Isolation. Neighborhood teams developed plans to enhance social connections within communities through a deliberate focus on inclusive, healthy spaces designed to bring residents together while honoring the history and unique strengths of the community. Each team received a personalized action plan and suggestions for the next steps. The Council is working to identify additional opportunities to provide support.

Our Initiatives and Impact

Supporting Black Health Through Socially Connected Communities

In Charlotte, North Carolina, three predominantly Black neighborhoods facing the pressures of gentrification began building social connection in ways that reclaim power and self-efficacy. Working alongside Healthy Places by Design, we co-created a series of learning sessions with the goal of creating safer places for people to connect. We worked with community leaders from Grier Heights, Hidden Valley, and Washington Heights neighborhoods. These learning sessions built trust, increased knowledge, and ensured local experience, wisdom, and resources were shared.

In each neighborhood, three to four people worked as a team to identify strategies for building social cohesion, deciding how they wanted to create inclusive, healthy community spaces that bring people together while honoring their community’s history and unique strengths. Community leaders voiced concerns and pressures at each planning session, including gentrification and displacement, housing costs, transportation issues, and more.

Using the Black Health Bill of Rights framework, community leaders expressed a strong sense of pride in the history of their neighborhoods that served as a foundation for cultivating a healthy community identity. From an asset-based approach and with technical assistance from Healthy Places by Design and the Council, each team developed a plan to foster social connection in their community, anchored around reviving places of historical significance and telling inspiring stories of success and resilience. In doing so, these neighborhoods are reclaiming their narratives and redefining the legacies of their communities.

Our Impact

Leaders in each community developed plans to:

Washington Heights: create historic walking and biking tours, combining healthy activity with opportunities for social connection.
Grier Heights: establish a community garden, green space, and other programming around the community center. They are also exploring ways to elevate oral history, ensure intergenerational cooperation, and build community pride.
Hidden Valley: bring healthy events and programming to the neighborhood church, creating an outdoor walking path, garden, orchard, and food pantry as an inclusive hub for multi-general and multi-cultural gatherings.

Ultimately, as a result of this collaboration, neighborhood leaders in Charlotte were able to build strong connections and solidarity within their communities, supporting the health of residents. Using their collective voice and influence amid broader forces of change, neighborhood leaders enhanced social cohesion, created a clear vision, and strengthened their communities for all residents.

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RESEARCH

Informing and Influencing Research for Black Americans

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Equipping Youth to Advocate for Health Resources and Access

PRACTICE

Connecting Local Communities to Trusted Health Resources

POLICY

Aligning National Black Organizations to Advance Policy Agenda

Young adulthood is a period of high risk for excessive weight gain and development of obesity due to pregnancy and postpartum weight retention. Women often face multiple responsibilities which prevent their participation in lifestyle interventions, increasing health inequities among women of color that contribute to obesity disparities. This presentation will describe lessons learned from a longstanding academic research partnership with a national home visiting organization that offers a model for reaching women and achieving real world lifestyle change.

One major contributor to excess weight gain is the high intake of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs). Increasing access to water and other healthy beverages is one viable strategy to reduce excess weight gain. Nationally, in 2012, 26% of adults reported consuming sugar-sweetened beverages (e.g., regular soda, fruit drinks, or both) ≥1 times daily. In 2014, consumption of SSBs at least once per day was highest among Black American adults aged 20-39 (77%), those of parenting age. Black youth have significantly higher total beverage consumption from soft drinks (30%) as compared with other children (as low as 9%). For all of these reasons, promoting healthy beverages throughout childhood and adolescence is a public health concern. This webinar aims to describe the national recommendations and resources for healthy beverage consumption among Black youth. Participants will: understand the effects on sugar-sweetened beverages on the health of Black youth, identify best practice recommendations to promote healthy beverages to Black youth, identify credible sources of information to promote healthy beverage consumption, and assess alternatives to sugar-sweetened beverages to consume healthy beverages.

Join our network of experts that integrate global perspectives, data and research, and lived experience to create actionable strategies to achieve Black health equity.

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Join us for an eye-opening session that delves into the transformative power of the Citizen/Community Scientist approach in improving community-led research and addressing health disparities. Article 5 of the Council on Black Health’s Black Health Bill of Rights highlights the importance of reclaiming our power and autonomy to transform our health. In this episode, we’ll provide an insightful overview of the Citizen/Community Scientist approach, developed in collaboration with Project Brotherhood. Discover how this approach can revolutionize the recruitment and engagement of diverse populations in the All of Us research program, a groundbreaking NIH-funded initiative involving communities. Find out how the Citizen/Community Scientist approach can impact your own research endeavors and contribute to sustainable solutions for improving health and reducing disparities. Don’t miss this opportunity to participate in the movement for change. Subscribe now and join the conversation!

In this webinar, we dive into the research and experiences of Black Americans who have successfully maintained healthy eating and physical activity behaviors for extended periods of time (more than 6 months). By understanding their strategies, we can develop intervention approaches that effectively promote health and reduce health disparities. Don’t miss out on these valuable insights that can transform the way we approach behavior change. Subscribe now and join the conversation!

Among ethnic groups in the United States, African Americans continue to be among those with notably low life expectancy and high overall rates of chronic illness, including diabetes. It is well documented that diabetes self-management decreases the severity of symptoms, slows the progression of disease trajectory, and increases the quality of life. However, socio-economic factors and the stress of structural racism continue to strongly influence health equity and disease disparities which, in turn, may interfere with self-management. While interventions focused on clinical targets have reduced the overall disease burden, they have failed to eliminate racial and geographic disparities in diabetes. To that end, there is an urgent need for sustainable interventions devoted to increasing health equity and the self-management of diabetes in African Americans. Today’s webinar will highlight the successes and challenges of a program of research dedicated to the self-management of diabetes among African Americans — including recruitment and retention — as well as discuss the next steps in practice and research. Subscribe to our channel for similar content!

The COVID-19 pandemic has rapidly expanded the use of telemedicine, remote diagnosis and treatment of patients using telecommunication technology, for care delivery. Telemedicine has appeared especially promising in the management of chronic diseases, such as type II diabetes mellitus (T2DM), which require consistent monitoring and adjustment to be optimally controlled. This webinar will provide a review of the current state of knowledge regarding the impact of telemedicine on diabetes outcomes and on disparities in diabetes care, identify the current gaps in knowledge with regard to delivery of diabetes care via telemedicine, and discuss barriers to telemedicine that can exacerbate known disparities in diabetes outcomes. Dr. Batch will conclude by discussing opportunities for future research that can inform clinical care and reduce disparities in diabetes.

Despite increased funding allocated for health and physical education (PE) programs through Every Student Succeeds Act, disparities in school-based physical activity programming persist with low-resource schools less likely to offer recess, have a certified PE teacher, or provide after-school sports programming, compared to higher-resource schools. Classroom-based physical activity interventions hold great potential for reducing physical activity disparities at school by providing children with 19 minutes of in-class activity every day (approximately two-thirds of the school-based recommendation of 30 minutes). Yet, low rates of treatment fidelity (the extent to which an intervention is delivered as conceived and planned) have been observed in low-resource schools, resulting in children accumulating less than 5 minutes of daily in-class activity. There is a critical need to develop classroom-based physical activity interventions that are tailored to context, to maximize fidelity and motivate behavior change in students toward increased activity levels. In the absence of such tailored programs, classroom-based interventions have the potential to perpetuate existing disparities in physical activity participation among low-income children. Today’s webinar will highlight the successes of a school-based physical activity program tailored for implementation in low-resource settings and how this same program was adapted for dissemination in the home environment during the COVID-19 pandemic.

African diaspora dance in public health and health care is positioned to have far-reaching implications as a tool for achieving health equity. This webinar will present African diaspora dance as a cultural determinant of health and discuss the role of African diaspora dancers as cultural bearers and trusted messengers for health promotion in the Black community. Subscribe to our channel for similar content!

Disparities in obesity prevalence and weight loss treatment affecting Black women persist. This is a barrier to improving health risks and outcomes in weight-related conditions like type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Black women’s provision of care to family and non-kin networks may be a barrier to achieving weight control. Examining the multiple caregiver roles, a sociocultural factor among Black women engaged in a behavioral weight loss intervention may indicate the role of such context on behavior change and weight. In this talk, Dr. Blackman Carr will discuss her work and insights surrounding Black women’s caregiving on dietary and physical activity behaviors and weight while pursuing weight loss. The webinar will also indicate potential directions for future efforts to address obesity and improve weight loss in treatment-seeking Black women. Subscribe to our channel for similar content!

The limited success in the prevention of diabetes and other chronic diseases and the related efforts to achieve health equity reflects a lack of knowledge about which programs and policies can effectively reach underserved racial/ethnic minority and low-resource populations. Implementation of programs and policies outside of health care settings (i.e., in community settings such as schools and childcare centers, worksites, social service organizations, and religious organizations) has high potential in this respect. However, unique challenges arise from the fact that primary missions, capacity, cultures, and values in such settings are not centered on physical health or health services delivery. This webinar will present a review of implementation research in community settings and highlight lessons learned to guide future research and practice in diverse settings and geographies.

Racial disparities in weight status during the childbearing window have long-lasting implications for racial disparities in obesity over the life course. Neighborhood context is a key multilevel determinant of maternal weight status during and after childbearing. However, the multidimensional nature of neighborhood contexts is often not captured in a comprehensive way. Doing so would facilitate a more complex understanding of how neighborhoods impact on health beyond simple additive accumulations of individual factors across the social, physical, and built environment. It can also improve insight into how neighborhoods can be leveraged to enhance the effectiveness of interventions targeting maternal weight status. This talk will explore insights from my research using composite measures of neighborhood opportunity access in relation to racial/ethnic disparities in key weight-related maternal health outcomes, including gestational weight gain and postpartum weight retention. The talk will conclude by proposing systems-based methods as a next step in continuing to capture the complex and dynamic aspects of neighborhood context in ways that can facilitate translation of evidence into action to improve Black maternal health.

Racial/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in diabetes-related outcomes persist. There is a need for effective interventions that facilitate diabetes self-management while also acknowledging the social context in which patients are trying to self-manage. We will present results from our NIDDK-funded two-year randomized pilot trial, Bridge to Health/Puente a la Salud, as well as lessons learned.

Preschool-age children from low socioeconomic environments tend to have low physical activity levels. In the US, approximately 61% of preschool-age children spend most of their day in non-parental childcare settings such as preschool centers, making this an ideal setting to intervene on their physical activity levels. A significant proportion of physical activity interventions targeting preschool centers have been stand-alone programs and have been implemented by trained external staff, which is not a viable model. For a physical activity program to be viable and sustainable, the program must be integrated into the preschool day and implemented by preschool teachers. This presentation will describe the characteristics of successful preschool-based physical activity interventions. The majority of the presentation will focus on lessons learned from implementing teacher-led physical activity interventions in preschool-age children from low socioeconomic environments.

The ability to address the high rates of childhood obesity in black communities will depend in part on how healthful, lower-calorie foods are priced relative to less healthful, higher-calorie alternatives. This webinar will highlight AACORN’s recently published research with Black Americans from four cities on how food prices impact what foods they buy.

African-American women are disproportionately affected with a sedentary lifestyle, high body weight, and increased risk for stress-related chronic diseases. Yoga can be an effective strategy to address adverse health outcomes by decreasing sedentary behavior and stress; however little research has been conducted to explore its effect in African-American women. This presentation will review the existing literature on the benefits of yoga and explore the potential of yoga to address health outcomes in African-American women.

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Black women have a higher prevalence of obesity than any other major demographic group in the United States. Additionally, black women tend to lose less weight than their white counterparts when engaging in obesity treatment regardless of modality. Reasons for differences in obesity prevalence and weight loss outcomes are not fully understood and warrant further exploration. This presentation will explore psychological factors that are associated with weight management among black women in the Deep South with a particular focus on the roles of stress and depression in obesity and obesity-related health outcomes.

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The prevalence of obesity in the United States has been steadily increasing over the last few decades. Black women have a high prevalence of obesity and severe obesity. An individual’s perception of body size might differ based on what is thought to be “normal” weight in their reference group or sociocultural context and limit weight control motivations or success. This webinar will share findings from a literature review focused on examining the significance of the association between body image and obesity in Black women. The presentation will identify cultural influences, address salient themes, highlight gaps in the literature, and discuss the importance of incorporating body image issues in public health solutions for prevention and control of obesity and related conditions, such as type 2 diabetes.

Heart disease, cancer, and diabetes are leading causes of death for Black men that have been linked with obesity and obesogenic behaviors such as unhealthy eating, sugar-sweetened beverage consumption, sedentary behavior and physical inactivity. Strategies to address obesity among Black Americans regularly enroll more women than men and few rigorously designed studies have identified healthy strategies to promote weight management, control or loss in Black men. During this webinar, Dr. Griffith will describe some of the challenges with how health researchers and practitioners frame Black men’s chronic disease risk, motivate Black men to engage in healthier behavior, and implement interventions to address obesity, diabetes and related health issues. He will discuss some promising qualitative, quantitative and intervention research and lessons learned that suggest new strategies to promote healthy weight loss among Black men.

The Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) provided strong evidence that modest weight loss could reduce the onset of diabetes by half, among persons at high risk for diabetes. In DPP and other intense behavioral weight loss interventions Black participants lose clinically significant amounts of weight, but among Black women, weight loss outcomes are generally among the lowest. This webinar will present research summarizing the weight loss outcomes of Black Americans (mainly women) participating in trials of DPP adaptations and then highlight more recent studies that suggest new approaches to designing behavioral weight loss approaches for Black Americans that show promise in improving observed weight loss outcomes.

This presentation will illuminate and discuss assumptions associated with faith-oriented interventions that can be incommensurate with the theological and operational contexts of churches and other faith institutions. Faith settings are logical as potential venues for lifestyle change interventions related to weight management and diabetes control in black communities. Addressing these and other assumptions can lead to improvements in intervention effectiveness, uptake, and sustainability.

Highlights AACORN research that explored perceptions of targeted food and beverage marketing practices among food retailers and policymakers serving Black communities. Interviews were conducted in Chicago, IL and Birmingham, AL. Presenters will highlight insights from these key decision makers and discuss implications of the study results for efforts to improve the healthfulness of food marketed to Black Americans.

The benefits of physical activity for preventing and treating chronic diseases, including diabetes, are well established. Self-report instruments suggest that African Americans engage in less leisure-time physical activity (LTPA) than other population subgroups; however, objectively measured physical activity suggests that African Americans may be more active, overall. During this webinar we will discuss differences in physical activity patterns obtained from self-report and objective measures of physical activity, and the impact of these assessments on public health recommendations and campaigns. We will also describe specific benefits of LTPA and efforts to address disparities in LTPA in African American populations.