Healthy Communities

What We Do › Healthy Communities

“An important aspect of the Healthy Communities concept is engaging and empowering the community. A powerful vehicle for bringing about environmental and behavioral change, community engagement is the process of working collaboratively with groups of people to address issues that influence that community’s health and well-being.”

Robert William Prasaad Steiner, associate professor, University of Louisville Department of Family and Community Medicine (Constanta, Romania/Louisville, Kentucky, partnership)

Health is more than the absence of physical ailments; it is a notion that encompasses the wellbeing of individuals, families, and entire communities.

AIHA’s Healthy Communities program moves healthcare practitioners outside hospital walls and into the heart of the villages and cities they serve. Participants work hand-in-hand with a host of community stakeholders ranging from teachers and religious leaders to business owners and government officials in an effort to address such diverse issues as substance abuse, environmental protection, healthy lifestyles, and intimate partner violence.

Partners involved in the Healthy Communities program are part of a worldwide effort to create healthy communities and redefine what health means. They work hand-in-hand with local stakeholders to assess and prioritize problems, achieve consensus on appropriate ways of addressing key problem areas, and implement solutions that focus on quality of life issues, as well as medical concerns. In keeping with this concept, partners address not only physical ailments, but problems associated with modern life, such as overcrowded living conditions, pollution, and high unemployment, that ultimately affect the health status of their communities.

Projects

AIHA’s efforts to help the Healthy Communities concept take root in developing and transitioning nations are carried out through specific programmatic activities, including:

Healthy Communities Information Resources

Disseminating accurate, timely information rooted in evidence-based practices and sharing successful models and lessons learned plays an important role in AIHA’s strategy for sustainable healthcare programs. For more information about the Healthy Communities concept, please visit the following links:

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