Are you interested in integrating health and housing practices? Many practitioners in our community are—and they’ve noted that the biggest housing challenges contributing to inequitable health outcomes in their communities are unaffordable housing, segregation based on race and income, poor-quality housing, and housing instability.
How can you help decisionmakers and public agencies understand the connection between housing and health? How have hospitals gotten involved in housing? And how can local institutions partner to improve community health outcomes? ChangeLab Solutions’ BLOCK Project developed The Health & Housing Starter Kit to explore these questions.
Over the past 2 years, we’ve learned that across the country, practitioners are setting a powerful course, from forming collaborations and programs to tackling issues such as lead poisoning and asthma caused by substandard housing. Many are working to strengthen code enforcement initiatives, build awareness of the relationship between community trauma and housing development, or connect residents living in affordable housing to health services. We have loved learning about your work and have developed resources for the field in response to what we have learned.
The Health & Housing Starter Kit is designed to help local institutions take their first steps toward creating bold, innovative health and housing initiatives. The guide provides case studies of 3 institutions that have been working on health and housing initiatives for over 10 years. The starter kit also covers a range of practical issues such as forming partnerships with communities and other institutions, developing indicators to understand and evaluate your efforts, and crafting messages to build support.
To learn more about what local institutions can do to improve health outcomes through housing strategies:
- Download some or all of The Health & Housing Starter Kit
- See all of our Healthy Housing work
- Read our BLOCK Project blog posts on health and housing
- Take our Health & Housing Community Survey if you currently work on local housing issues
Contact us for more information on creating healthy changes in your community, and support our work!
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