Stay Up-to-Date With Exciting New Developments of the Healthy Places Index®
The Healthy Places Index® and Healthy Places Index®: Extreme Heat Edition have been part of the many exciting new projects and policies aiming to promote racial and health equity. This page keeps users up to date on the latest developments through HPI in the News, Case Studies, Webinars, and Academic Literature. Check out more below!
A comprehensive needs assessment by the Los Angeles County Department of Parks and Recreation has identified underresourced communities that are in need of green spaces, trails, and recreational facilities. To promote environmental and health equity, the County has chosen the Park Needs Assessment Plus (PNA+) Final Report as its plan to preserve 30% of land and coastal water by 2030. The PNA+ plan focuses on historically marginalized communities that need investments to improve environmental equity. By utilizing data from the Healthy Places Index, the assessment identified areas with disproportionate poverty rates, transportation barriers, reduced life expectancy, and ecological vulnerability. Using the power of the Healthy Places Index to inform decision-making, Los Angeles County is working towards creating a more equitable and sustainable future for all residents.
Learn more at Planetizen and lacountyparkneeds.org
The California Department of Health Care Services announced a key aspect of its California Advancing and Innovating Medi-Cal is population health management (PHM) which focuses on the health of entire communities instead of individual patients. In the CIOReview, Inland Empire Health Plan said the state will address social determinants of health in its new data collection risk stratification and segmentation (RSS) guideline, which will help healthcare providers take preventative health equity approaches by incorporating diverse data sources to prevent the exacerbation of health disparities and algorithm biases. The article explores Inland Empire Health Plan’s RSS approach. It highlights the importance of including social and environmental driver data, citing the Healthy Places Index, to capture social needs and community risks. Inland Empire Health Plan explains the RSS guideline is a transformative data framework to make healthcare responses more accessible and equitable.
Read the full story at the CIOReview
Marin County’s Office of Equity is making $2.5 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds available for residents to determine the best way to advance equity through action-oriented projects. The County is calling for ideas and is prioritizing proposals in communities that have experienced historic and ongoing economic and social marginalization using the Healthy Places Index. It is the county’s first participatory budget initiative to promote community-led decision-making. The county is inviting projects that address health equity-related issues, such as affordable housing, climate change, mental health, and economic mobility.
Read the full story at the Marin Independent Journal
As part of the California Creative Corps program, the Long Beach Arts Council is administering $4.75 million to address health equity through art in Los Angeles and Orange County. Long Beach Arts Council will provide $30,000 in grants to nonprofits and $50,000 to artists to collaborate for a year on health equity projects. The program uses the Healthy Places Index to choose recipients who demonstrate strong relationships with under-resourced communities, emphasizing disability and LGBTQ+ communities. Projects will bring resources and increase health, environmental justice, and social justice awareness. The California Creative Corps, the first program of its kind in the United States, was launched in response to the health inequities of the COVID-19 pandemic. The $60 million in one-time general fund dollars allocated to the California Arts Council will be spread among 58 counties in California.
Read the full story at the Orange County Register
San Diego and its regional partners joined a statewide initiative through the California Creative Corps program to address health equity through art. California Creative Corps granted the city’s Far South/Border North program $4.75 million in funding to allocate to artists to support the health and well-being of communities in the lowest quartile of the California Healthy Places Index. Recipients will carry out projects that increase awareness of social justice, public health, energy-water-climate, and civic engagement. The California Creative Corps, the first program of its kind in the United States, was launched in response to the health inequities of the COVID-19 pandemic. The $60 million in one-time general fund dollars allocated to the California Arts Council will be spread among 58 counties in California.
Read the full story at the Imperial Valley Press
Understanding the importance of local economies to health, the Solano County Public Health Division hired BrandGOV to launch the groundbreaking Shop Solano. Utilizing the power of the Healthy Places Index®, BrandGOV identified communities with the highest social and economic inequities to determine local businesses for the online platform. Shop Solano provides not only an online directory of local businesses but also includes job opportunities and neighborhood resources. To date, the HPI has been used to add 638 businesses to the platform designed to empower local economic resilience and stability. Empower Solano shows an innovative approach to supporting both the small businesses of communities, but also the people who live in them.
Read the full story at the Vallejo Times Herald
As part of the California Creative Corps pilot program, Del Norte County—which has the lowest Healthy Places Index® score in North State—will use the HPI to evaluate and promote art projects designed to promote health equity. The California Arts Council is currently conducting a listening tour of 19 counties in the North State Region to provide information about a new workforce development opportunity for artists and social service organizations.
The California Creative Corps, the first program of its kind in the United States, was launched in response to the health inequities of the COVID-19 pandemic and will be administered by 13 arts organizations. The $60m in one-time general fund dollars allocated to the California Arts Council will be spread among 58 counties in California. The listening tour is being used to help create guidelines to advise applicants on how to frame their grant proposals and determine eligibility.
Read the full story on Wild Rivers Outpost
The Utah Department of Health and Human Services and the Public Health Alliance of Southern California have launched the Utah Healthy Places Index®. The new tool allows users to compare data about neighborhood-level social drivers of health, such as education, job opportunities, and access to transportation. The tool is based on the same methodology used by the California Healthy Places Index® and was developed in collaboration with nearly 100 partners from across Utah. It includes policy guides to help users identify solutions to improve community health and promote equity. The Utah HPI is available here.
Read more at FOX 13 Salt Lake City and KSLNewsRadio
Plumas Arts and the Nevada County Arts Council will host a California Creative Corps listening session. The agencies will present key information and initiate a conversation on how artists can help communities tackle issues most critical to them as part of an Upstate Listening Tour across 19 counties. The California Creative Corps pilot is using a $60 million one-time General Fund administered by the California Arts Council to support artists, cultural practitioners, as well as arts and social service sector organizations as part of the pilot’s efforts to promote health equity.
Eliza Tudor, executive director at Nevada County Arts Council, who will be joining Plumas Arts for its Listening Session, said, “Together, we will be introducing what the State sees as a new method of evaluating the relative health of communities. Using the California Healthy Places Index® we are identifying issues that are specific to Plumas County, inviting input on solutions, and inviting artists to position themselves to create awareness around them.”
Read more on Plumas News
The San Diego County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to establish a rental subsidy pilot program for older adults at risk of homelessness. The Pilot Shallow Rental Subsidy Program will provide a monthly rental subsidy of $500 for qualifying low-income San Diegans for up to 18 months. The new rental subsidy program supports applicants over 55 years old who are head of household and pay more than 50% of household income towards housing. The pilot program will focus on people who are 60 years old and have an income in the bottom 30% of the area. San Diego County will also use the Healthy Places Index® to prioritize older adults living in Health Equity areas within the county to promote place-based equity.
Read the full story in East County Magazine
Using the Healthy Places Index®, Los Angeles County officials found that neighborhoods in the two lowest HPI quartiles have accounted for 70% of the county’s total MPX cases. The disparity parallels people of color having disproportionately lower MPX vaccination rates. Identifying these place and race-based inequities have helped the county work to identify and coordinate with community-based organizations to develop messaging and outreach to promote health equity. The County's use of the HPI helps illuminate the importance of place-based data on social and economic conditions is essential for policies and strategies to promote public health.
Read the full story on Los Angeles Times
The grant will help support artists and cultural projects in San Diego and Imperial Counties to increase local awareness of public health, civic engagement, climate and water conservation, and social justice. The campaign's goal is to increase public awareness related to prioritizing the health and well-being of communities within the lowest quartile of the California Healthy Places Index®. The grant is part of a broader effort to improve health and well-being through supporting creative, artistic, and cultural practices.
Read the full story on the San Diego Business Journal
The Santa Barbara County Community Services Department has announced that the Santa Barbara County Office of Arts and Culture has been awarded a competitive $4.75 million grant to support the health, safety, and resiliency of the Central Coast Region through the arts. The Office of Arts & Culture will use the Healthy Places Index® to prioritize regrants to fund arts and social service organizations in the lowest quartile of the HPI. The grant will support public health awareness messages to stop the spread of COVID-19, promote water and energy conservation, and promote community and civic engagement.
Read the full story on the Santa Barbara Independent and Edhat
In a proposed rule by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), hospitals would be encouraged to promote health equity by addressing the Social Drivers of Health. Health Affairs highlights the importance of utilizing social indices, such as the Health Places Index, to assess and address the social needs of patients. By incorporating patient and geographic social health needs, hospitals can utilize multisector collaboration for focused interventions to promote equitable health outcomes by addressing the Social Drivers of Health.
Read the full story at Health Affairs
KCBS radio highlights how the California Healthy Places Index®: Extreme Heat Edition can tell how many days will reach 90- and 100-degrees Fahrenheit by mid-century at the community level. Additionally, the tool has additional layers that show what areas have the highest vulnerability to extreme heat, such as access to parks and shade and the age of the population. The tool can help communities understand the policies and resources to be resilient to climate change driven extreme heat.
Listen to the full story on Audacy
As the consequences of climate change driven extreme weather are intensifying in California, it is essential to understand what climate models project the impacts of extreme heat at the neighborhood level will be. The California Healthy Places Index® allows users to see projected heat exposure and the place-based social and environmental factors influencing heat-related health outcomes at the census track level. Utilizing this information is fundamental for climate emergency and resilience plans. The tool also provides links to a variety of grant programs and resources for increasing equitable community and resident climate resilience.
Read the full story at The Press Democrat
To help California prepare for increasingly common extreme heat, the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation and Public Health Alliance of Southern California co-develop the Extreme Heat Edition of the Healthy Places Index®. Low-income residents and communities of color are disproportionately impacted by extreme heat due to community conditions influenced by historic and ongoing racism and discrimination. The new tool will help government officials, Community Based Organizations, and local health departments prepare for the impacts of extreme heat to promote climate health equity and resilience.
Read the full story at Planetizen
A.B. 1778, introduced by Assemblymember Cristina Garcia, seeks to help reverse the historic inequities created by the freeway building machine. Climate, environmental justice, and health organization strongly support the bill’s proposal to prevent state resources on any project that does meet certain criteria measured by the Healthy Places Index®. The bill would be an essential step toward shifting to investing in better, cleaner, and healthier forms of transportation to help make communities healthier.
Read the full story at StreetsBlog Cal
Background: Social determinants of health (SDoH) describe the complex network of circumstances that impact an individual before birth and across the lifespan. SDoH contextualize factors in a community that are associated with chronic disease risk and certain health disparities. The main objective of this study was to explore the impact of SDoH on the prevalence of obesity and diabetes, and whether these factors explain disparities in these health outcomes among Latinos in Southern California.
Results: Communities with lower HPI scores were associated with higher prevalence of metabolic disease and a greater proportion of Latino residents. Cities in the lowest decile of HPI scores had 71% of the population identifying as Latino compared to 12% in the highest decile. HPI scores explained 61% of the variability in adult obesity (p<0.001), 41% of the variability in childhood obesity (p<0.001), and 47% of the variability in adult diabetes(p<0.001). Similar results were observed when examining SVI and CES with these health outcomes.
Read the full text on the BMC Public Health
Introduction: We describe the California Healthy Places Index® (HPI) and its performance relative to other indexes for measuring community well-being at the census-tract level. The HPI arose from a need identified by health departments and community organizations for an index rooted in the social determinants of health for place-based policy making and program targeting. The index was geographically granular, validated against life expectancy at birth, and linked to policy actions.
Results: The HPI's domains were aligned with the social determinants of health and policy action areas of economic resources, education, housing, transportation, clean environment, neighborhood conditions, social resources, and health care access. The overall HPI score was the sum of weighted domain scores, of which economy and education were highly influential (50% of total weights). The HPI was strongly associated with life expectancy at birth (r = 0.58).
Read the full text on the National Library of Medicine
Abstract: Syphilis and congenital syphilis (CS) are increasing in California (CA). From 2015 through 2019, for example, CA cases of early syphilis among reproductive-age females (15-44) and CS each increased by >200%. Certain populations-including people experiencing homelessness, using drugs, and/or belonging to certain racial/ethnic groups-have been disproportionately impacted. We hypothesized that geospatial social determinants of health (SDH) contribute to such health inequities. To demonstrate this, we geospatially described syphilis in CA using the Healthy Places Index® (HPI). The HPI is a composite index that assigns a score to each CA census tract based on eight socioeconomic characteristics associated with health (education, housing, transportation, neighborhood conditions, clean environment, and healthcare access as well as economic and social resources).
We divided CA census tracts into four quartiles based on HPI scores (with the lowest quartile having the least healthy socioeconomic and environmental conditions), then used 2013-2020 CA sexually transmitted diseases surveillance data to compare overall syphilis (among adults and adolescents) and CS case counts, incidence rates (per 100,000 population or live births), and incidence rate ratios (IRRs) among these quartiles. From 2013 to 2020, across all stages of syphilis and CS, disease burden was greatest in the lowest HPI quartile and smallest in the highest quartile (8308 cases (representing 33.2% of all incidents) versus 3768 (15.1%) for primary and secondary (P&S) syphilis; 5724 (31.6%) versus 2936 (16.2%) for early non-primary non-secondary (NPNS) syphilis; 11,736 (41.9%) versus 3026 (10.8%) for late/unknown duration syphilis; and 849 (61.9%) versus 57 (4.2%) for CS; all with p < 0.001). Using the highest HPI quartile as a reference, the IRRs in the lowest quartile were 17 for CS, 4.5 for late/unknown duration syphilis, 2.6 for P&S syphilis, and 2.3 for early NPNS syphilis. We thus observed a direct relationship between less healthy conditions (per HPI) and syphilis/CS in California, supporting our hypothesis that SDH correlate with disparities in syphilis, especially CS. HPI could inform allocation of resources to: (1) support communities most in need of assistance in preventing syphilis/CS cases and (2) reduce health disparities.
Read the full text at the National Library of Medicine
Abstract: Black women have the highest incidence of preterm birth (PTB). Upstream factors, including neighborhood context, may be key drivers of this increased risk. This study assessed the relationship between neighborhood quality, defined by the Healthy Places Index®, and PTB among Black women who lived in Oakland, California, and gave birth between 2007 and 2011 (N = 5418 women, N = 107 census tracts). We found that, compared with those living in lower quality neighborhoods, women living in higher quality neighborhoods had 20-38% lower risk of PTB, independent of confounders. Findings have implications for place-based research and interventions to address racial inequities in PTB.
Read the full text at the National Library of Medicine
There’s a lot you can do with the Healthy Places Index® for free on the website, but if you want to go more in-depth, or just want to learn more about how to use the HPI in your work, we’re here to help! The Public Health Alliance of Southern California is happy to share our expertise through customized trainings, tailored reports, capacity building and other types of assistance you might need.
We offer assistance in the form of webinars, phone consultations, trainings, plans and assessments, data reports, and other formats that can help you meet your project goals and integrate public health and equity into your work. We can also partner with you as a subcontractor on a Request for Proposals or similar opportunity.
