Partnerships Among Community Development, Public Health, And Health Care Could Improve The Well-Being Of Low-Income People

Community development is an enterprise that helps low-income people and communities by giving them access to financing and other tools to build affordable housing, start businesses, and build community facilities such as charter schools, health clinics, and child care centers. In short, community development helps make struggling communities more vibrant economically and stronger socially. A connection that is not made often enough, however, is why and how these interventions potentially make communities healthier as well. In this article we discuss the origins and growth of the community development sector; describe some of the ways in which its activities have addressed the “upstream” causes of poor health; provide specific examples of community development programs that have collaborated with the health sector or otherwise focused on advancing health; and offer prescriptions for how the community development sector can collaborate even more closely with the health sector in the future to maximize human health and well-being.