A community—like each citizen within it—is a living organism that must be healthy in order to survive and thrive. All of its systems must function effectively and harmoniously. Each component must be vigorous and strong. And the relationships between those components must be healthy too.
Within a comprehensive community health framework, promoting health starts with recognizing the factors in a community that either enhance health or detract from health. It also involves
There is no magic formula for achieving community health. But the suite of practices on the right are all consistent with the health promotion approach set out on this site.They are all grounded in sound theory and contain components which are internally consistent and have been associated with effectiveness to varying degrees in the literature. All show promise in influencing a healthy community environment.
While some of the promising practices can be implemented individually, they will be more effective when implemented as part of an integrated strategy.This is because communities are social ecosystems in which a variety of factors interact to influence the health of the environment and the residents who live within it. Applying evidence involves more than choosing just one or two components, even if each is associated with positive outcomes in a research study. All of the components need to fit together within a consistent comprehensive framework and theoretical model in order to work most effectively in the real world. Changing the environment takes time, but even small steps matter.
Click individual items to access information related to each promising practice, and follow the links to both the evidence that supports the practice and the tools that can be used to implement it.
The implementation of health promotion always means more than simply following a set of instructions. In other words, the promising practices presented here must be tailored to your particular setting and the resources that are available to you. CARBC is glad to provide consultation and support to help communities with this process and will continue to identify and develop tools to help community groups implement the change process.