Healthy Community and disability

[Guest guest]

This is a great group with significant involvement in state and federal

policy discussions. Let them hear your ideas!

Thanks,

Kahan

Hello,

The term Healthy Community is something that is being talked about a lot

lately. There are many initiatives among public health agencies that

are working towards building healthy communities. These initiatives

focus on ways of improving physical activity and healthy eating through

new programs and new infrastructure in communities with the hopes of

reducing obesity. It is not clear that these initiatives are addressing

the needs of people with disabilities, or even asking what

infrastructure/programming is needed to support people with disabilities

being healthy and active in the community?

Most people understand the importance of community living for all

citizens, including those with disabilities. In order to make sure the

community living experience is beneficial to everyone, we need to work

together to identify ways to improve access to housing, community

supports, fitness opportunities, transportation, and more. The Center on

Health Promotion Research for People with Disabilities is developing a

much-needed measurement tool to assess how well a community supports

healthy, active living for people with disabilities. The tool will

assess not only the physical infrastructure of a community but the

social infrastructure as well. Once completed, this measurement tool

will be available for public use to help community leaders and citizens

determine ways to improve all aspects of a healthy community to make

them more accessible and inclusive to residents with disabilities.

Findings can be used to formalize an action plan with specific

recommendations for promoting inclusion into targeted communities.

What do you think a Healthy Community is for people with disabilities?

Please let us know what you think are the key elements of a healthy

community that support healthy, active living for people with

disabilities. Accessible transportation? Accessible paths and trails?

Trained fitness professionals? More accessible food and grocery options?

Why do you think these elements are important? Do you have any

success/failure stories about the elements of a healthy community that

you can share? We will use these suggestions to begin our process of

identifying the critical factors that are needed to create a healthy,

inclusive community. It will be very helpful if you let us know some

background information about yourself when you are responding - such as:

name, disability if applicable, age, state, and organizational

affiliation.

Please send ideas to Yochai Eisenberg: yeisen2@...

<mailto:yeisen2@...>

Feel free to pass on to anyone you think would be interested.

THANKS!

--

Yochai Eisenberg, MUPP

Project Coordinator

Center on Health Promotion Research for Persons with Disabilities

University of Illinois at Chicago

1640 W. Roosevelt Rd. M/C 626

Chicago, IL 60608

yeisen2@... <mailto:yeisen2@...>

312.413.9410