What makes a community healthy?

You may think of a healthy community as one with quality healthcare options, low disease rates, and plenty of opportunities to be active.  Perhaps it’s a place with thriving community gardens or a high-tech system for sharing health information.  

To create a healthy community, we start with a vision, an IDEA. But where do we go from there?  It’s rare that one person working alone can make a major impact. We’re most likely to achieve our collective community health goals when we COLLABORATE - working together to reach that goal. 

A community that can collaborate well is a community

that can create health.

Partnerships between the private, public and community and voluntary sectors are becoming increasingly central to programs designed to improve community health.  
We know that there are many active groups in Sarasota County working on similar issues and having similar goals. When groups collaborate, that work has the potential to become more impactful, more innovative, and more responsive to the needs of the community.

The Interactive event and the action it inspires:

• Brings diverse groups together, encouraging collaborative efforts to achieve health goals;

• Inspires creative, innovative approaches to addressing health issues;

• Introduces tools to make collaborations easier and more visible in the community;

Priority Areas

The Community Health Interactive focused on three broad community health issues.  Ideas for community health solutions created by participants fell roughly into these three categories:

• Increasing Access to Healthcare

• Encouraging Active, Healthy Lifestyles

• Improving Chronic Disease Management

To read more about these priority areas and how they were selected, click here.

Learn more about work that has been done in other communities.

To learn more about collaborative approaches to improve community health, check out the following resources:

NAACHO Model Practice Database

The Model Practice Database is an online, searchable collection of practices across public health areas. This database allows you to learn what works and to ensure that resources are used wisely on effective programs that have been implemented with good results.

 

The Community Guide

(U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)

This guide provides evidence-based recommendations of what is known about effectiveness, economic efficiency, and feasibility of interventions to prevent disease and promote health in a variety of public health concerns including substance abuse, violence, and nutrition. 

Quick Links:

2008 Interactive Event Agenda

Health Priorities Areas
for Sarasota County

NAACHO Model

Practice Database

The Community Guide