Recommendation: Designate neighborhood Wellness Opportunity Zones where incentives are provided for innovative connections between and among all public and private policies, programs and practices affecting health and well-being.  

What we heard:

Residents have a vision for healthy communities where there are grocery stores selling fresh fruits and vegetables; clean, safe parks and other places to walk and exercise; affordable housing; reliable public transportation; and businesses that pay employees a living wage.

What we’ve done to date to advance this recommendation:

• Researched promising programs and practices in our region and across the country

• Developed a concept paper on the Wellness Opportunity Zone

• Submitted testimony in support of integrating health and wellness goals into the Bladensburg Town Sector Plan and Proposed Sectional Map Amendment. As a result, Councilmembers Harrington, Knotts and Dean introduced Resolution CR-39-2007, which recommended that the Town of Bladensburg be designated a Wellness Opportunity Zone and offered several policy options to support this designation. The resolution was adoped by the Council on June 12, 2007.

• Successfully advocated for the establishment of Wellness Opportunity Zones to be included in Mayor Fenty's 100 Day Plan. D.C. Department of Health also submitted a letter to City Administrator Dan Tangherlini in support of the concept

• Partnered with Kaiser Permanente to launch its Community Health Initiative in Prince George’s County, a place-based initiative focused on healthy eating, active living. The Washington Business Journal recently featured this project in an article, Kaiser Permanente Brings Community Focus to Obesity.

What we’ve learned:

Residents of our region understand that health is about more than access to health care. They want their communities to have all of the economic, social and environmental structures that will enable them to live healthy lives.

Policymakers are also beginning to recognize that decisions outside of the health care arena have a major impact on the health and wellness of communities and their residents. There are important indicators that can help us measure if our communities have what they need to be healthy, such as whether residents have access to a grocery store within half a mile of their home. There are also tools, such as health impact assessments, that can help us consider whether proposed growth and (re)development policies will be good for our health. Policymakers can also use incentives such as tax credits to encourage healthy design.

Next steps:

We will continue to educate policymakers and to encourage them to view transportation, housing, education and environmental policy as health policy. We will support the use of innovative tools, like health impact assessments. We will also continue to serve as key partners in Kaiser Permanente’s Community Health Initiative in Prince George’s County.

Resources, model programs and practices:

Planning for Healthy Places, an effort to engage engage public health advocates in the land-use decision-making process throughout California

Why Place Matters: Building a Movement for Healthy Communities and The Impact of the Built Environment on Health, two reports from PolicyLink highlighting cutting edge research and programs that make the connection between health and community conditions

The Healthy Development Measurement Tool, an evidence-based practice to consider health in land use planning   

CDC Healthy Places offers a collection of resources on designing healthy communities