Conceptualizing Community Health + Wellbeing

Community wellbeing and resilience are closely related. Wellbeing encompasses the goals and priorities identified as of greatest importance to the community today, and resilience relates more closely to expectations about future wellbeing. Community wellbeing and the ability to cope and adapt over time is closely related to the physical, social, and economic circumstances that people are born into, grow up with, and live in. Prolonged or repeated exposure to negative environmental impacts or crises result in physical and mental tolls to both individuals and communities.

If we measure the health of our communities based solely on wealth and growth, then many are thriving. However, if our definition of wellbeing is expanded to include the full range of physical, social, economic, environmental, cultural, and political concerns that matter to most people, then the diagnoses are far more mixed. In the face of increasing risk, improving community wellbeing requires reducing the challenges that negatively impact daily life, and building capacity to respond to disruption. When considering communities as a whole, there are critical considerations in enhancing overall wellbeing. These include creating high-quality social and infrastructural connections within and between communities, providing healthy options to meet basic needs, and recognizing inequalities within communities that disadvantage some residents.

community

Community is a geographically bound group of people on a local-scale who have either direct or indirect relationships with each other.

community wellbeing

Community wellbeing is the social, economic, environmental, cultural, & political conditions identified by community members as essential for them to cope with the normal stresses of life and fulfil their potential.

-Wiseman and Brasher, 2008, p. 358

Community Wellbeing Foundational Concepts

CONNECTIONS

Social and infrastructural networks that foster a community’s ability to grow and prosper. Social connections offer support to those in need, build trust, foster civic engagement, and empower community members to participate in their community. Infrastructural connections provide efficient and effective resource management and allow both gray and green systems to flourish.

HEALTHY OPTIONS

Community wellbeing is supported by several fundamental elements, including safe housing, accessible transportation, high-quality education, recreation options, employment opportunities, and access to arts and cultural activities.

EQUITABLE OUTCOMES

In addition to acute shocks, many people suffer chronic social stresses that put resilience out of reach. Wide disparities exist in employment and wages, educational attainment, and health outcomes. These social stresses are correlated with a greater vulnerability to acute shocks, leaving some that already experience inequity further exposed to risk. An equitable community is supported by values of diversity, social justice, and mobility in ways that build social cohesion and lower barriers to opportunity for all residents.

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A CASE STUDY: Planning for Wellbeing

Greenville, North Carolina, has often faced severe flooding due to hurricanes and tropical storms. Several residential neighborhoods along the Tar River in Greenville flooded repetitively before the city took action. Following Hurricane Floyd, which hit in 1999, the city started a buyout program to transform floodprone neighborhoods into a greenway network. Greenville pursued the creation of greenways as a strategy for supporting the health and well-being of its citizens, increasing and improving the quality of local green spaces, and bolstering tax revenue through increased property values through increasing property values on adjacent parcels while reducing flood risk. The city funds its programs with federal and state dollars, which are won and leveraged with local funds. Their 2004 Greenway Master Plan calls for 42 distinct projects to expand and improve parks and greenspace. One such park, Town Commons, features 21 acres of green space and an amphitheater designed to submerge during flood events – holding water from the Tar River that runs along side it. A network of trails is interlaced throughout the park, connecting the town’s downtown district with peaceful walks along the river. Town Commons, together with the greenways, offer beautiful places for residents to gather, move, and recreate, all the while increasing the capacity of the landscape to store stormwater, raising neighboring property values, and boosting the city budget.

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