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Healthy Neighborhood Investments:
A Policy Scan & Strategy Map

Build Healthy Places Network partnered with Shift Health Accelerator to create the Healthy Neighborhood Investments: A Policy Scan & Strategy Map that identifies several policy actions for advancing health and racial equity through cross-sector investments.

The Policy Scan serves as a tool for community-owned priority setting that reduces inequities and strengthens neighborhood revitalization, with a geographic emphasis on California.

The Policy Scan uses the Thriving Together Springboard for Equitable Recovery and Resilience as a fundamental framework. A 38-member Policy Council convened to advise the scan and prioritized belonging and civic muscle as key to achieving our collective goals. 

Our goals are to: 

  • Frame pathways and opportunities for community leaders to advocate for policy change by healthcare, policymakers and community development. 
  • Identify policy barriers and ways to overcome them for joint investments specifically addressing the social determinants of health. 
  • Identify policies that create a more conducive environment for collaboration across sectors.
  • Incentivize healthcare to consider community development organizations as important partners in shaping policy and investments in social determinants of health.

Support for this scan was provided by the Blue Shield of California Foundation.

 

 

Watch the recording of the May 19, 2021 Healthy Neighborhood Investments Policy Convening for Advancing Racial and Health Equity where Doug Jutte from BHPN moderated a conversation with plenary speakers Angela Glover-Blackwell, Founder-in-Residence of PolicyLink, Kathleen Kelly Janus, Senior Advisor on Social Innovation for Governor Gavin Newsom, and Carolyn Wang Kong, Chief Program Director of Blue Shield of California Foundation. This convening was hosted by BHPN and Shift Health Accelerator. Over 800 leaders from community, healthcare, community development, and other sectors gathered with an intention to weave belonging and civic muscle into the fabric of policy for racial and health equity–with a focus on California.

Building Healthy Places Network is committed to working with our partners to find ways to advance the next steps identified in the scan. The network invites all readers to reach out if you are interested in any of these actions so that we can bring you in or follow your lead. Thank you again to all the innovators across the country who are forming, adopting, and implementing policy changes that will help us all thrive together—no exceptions.

Please take a moment to give us feedback and let us know how you are using the scan. Email us at: policyscan@buildhealthyplaces.org.