Land Use and Health Resource Team

 

 

Report of Facilitated Dialogue Findings

(Validated and Revised)

 

May 11, 2006

 

 

On April 6, 2006, members of the Land Use and Health Resource Team (LUHRT) engaged in a facilitated dialogue to develop answers to this focus question:   "Based on the input received through the mini-conference, what concrete actions by Land Use and Health Resource Team (and other stakeholders) would help to make health a central consideration in planning and building?"

 

Prior to the meeting, each participant was asked to come up with five possible actions that were suggested by the mini-conference.  The following process was used to create “group recommendations” out of these:

 

• Each participant shared one thought about the role LUHRT could play in improving the focus on health in planning and building.
• In small groups, participants shared the actions they had prepared, and came up with 3-5 good, concrete answers to the focus question.  These were written on index cards.
• The answers developed by small groups were paired and clustered on an adhesive board.  Each cluster was then named and articulated as a recommendation for future action. 

 

INITIAL THOUGHTS

 

Participants shared these initial thoughts about the roles that LUHRT could play:

 

• Increasing awareness of existing programs addressing land use and health issues; and helping to better coordinate these efforts.
• Improved networking; helping different organizations that are involved in these issues to be mutually supportive.
• More pro-active communication, and building relationships with planners and developers.
• Community-based planning, i.e. planning that appreciates relationships and acknowledges the need to share information and build trust within complex systems.
• Support and assistance to the developers and builders who already want to build walkable, beautiful infrastructure.
• There are two audiences, both of whom were at the mini-conference:  1) those who represented organizations, who tended to talk about the need to mobilize more effectively, and 2) those who represented only themselves, who tended to talk about more personal actions they could take.
• Community mobilization, education, and outreach—the “parade.”
• Creating partnerships with those with whom we are not working now:  state associations, Michigan Association for Local Public Health (MALPH), MAP, etc.
• Green infrastructure planning:  helping deepen the public’s understanding about preservation; working with GIS layering, mapping exercises, building enthusiasm and awareness.
• Getting the community to lead, so that these efforts have a life of their own and are not strictly staff-driven.

 

 

RECOMMENDATIONS

 

Five recommendations emerged from the structured effort to answer the focus question.

The five recommendations concerned the following:

 

• Community-based Engagement and Planning
• Community Education
• Institutional Engagement
• New Partner Mobilization
• Using the Media

 

On May 11, the LUHRT met to review and validate the recommendations.  This report incorporates changes made to the recommendations at that session.

1.   COMMUNITY-BASED ENGAGEMENT AND PLANNING:  Encourage the engagement of people in inclusive processes of needs identification and action planning built around reliable data and the community’s own insights into how to plan and build a healthier community.

 

Through education and advocacy, the LUHRT should encourage all current and future planning processes to be conducted in a way that maximizes understanding and input from community members.   This should be understood in contrast to a more top-down or outside-in process, where decision-makers are likely to seek validation for decisions that have already been made. 

 

There are at least three steps to such a process:

 

·         Define community needs as they relate to land use and health.  This should include education on the health of the community (results of Behavioral Risk Factor Surveys and other data that links health and land use) and surveys on conservation needs.  Surveys and dialogue sessions should focus on how land use planning decisions can advance community-driven goals for improvement.

·         Identify and develop community priorities in the form of short-term goals and long-term goals, in collaboration with community partners.

·         Identify and access resources needed to implement action steps toward the achievement of goals.

 

Most importantly, LUHRT should routinely provide input to community planning processes and encourage broad participation by the community in those processes.  

 

2. COMMUNITY EDUCATION:  Help grassroots, neighborhood-level groups understand how health is affected by land use and the built environment.  Empower them to foster ongoing dialogue and to mobilize around these issues.

 

Neighborhood and community groups can be powerful engines of community will.  LUHRT should create, borrow, or modify education programs designed to educate average citizens on the consequences of different land use strategies.  Such programs should be constructed in a way that enables people to go out and talk to others about the impact of land use and the built environment on health.  This could take the form of a “train the trainer” program; however, the best strategy is to go to neighborhood groups, share information, and then ask them how they will be effective in energizing others.  There should also be an ongoing link between these groups and the actions of organized coalitions and committees.

 

3. INSTITUTIONAL ENGAGEMENT:  Use educational opportunities to build stronger working relationships with developers, builders, and institutional partners so that all can move forward effectively and collaboratively on land use and health issues.

 

Another level of education (which may include grassroots advocates as well) is needed to strengthen working relationships with those who are directly involved in land use decision-making.  Three specific actions were developed.  In pursuing these, the LUHRT will need to assess the availability of resources needed to implement them.

 

• Pursue a Green Communities Workshop by the Michigan Association of Planning (MAP) for area stakeholders.  This could be framed as a follow-up event to the mini-conference, and a chance to build on the number of stakeholders engaged in this work.
• Create an inventory of tools and resources that can be used for education, outreach, and planning, by querying stakeholders identified through the mini-conference.  Share the inventory with all stakeholders, including institutional partners.  The inventory should include things like green infrastructure mapping, the Lansing master planning process, and any other examples of ways stakeholders can work together toward common goals.
• Attempt to orient all stakeholders to unique challenges of management built around relationships, inclusion, and broad ownership of decision-making processes (as opposed to processes that are top-down or mechanistic in nature).  This is especially important, given the 78 different units of government that have an interest in land use and planning.

 

4. NEW PARTNER MOBILIZATION: Through the LUHRT, create new, mutually beneficial relationships between people and organizations that are focused primarily on land use, and people and organizations that are focused primarily on health.  

 

Obviously, LUHRT should be an active participant in various community processes related to land use and health; but it should also become active in arenas that are not so customary.  Part of the effort to cultivate new advocates and allies should include reaching beyond the more obvious organizational and individual partners (those with a direct focus on land use and health).  This is strategically necessary in order to build and broaden the “community will” to adopt health-enhancing land use policies.  The following specific partner relationships were identified:

 

·         Health outreach teams operating in Lansing neighborhoods, that could incorporate land use issues into the canvassing/outreach work.

·         School districts in Clinton, Ingham, and Eaton Counties that could adopt a Safe Routes Program

·         Local and state public officials (including elected officials) who address either public health or land use issues, and who could promote legislation providing incentives for smart growth practices.

·         Coalitions and advisory bodies that address a broad array of community issues, such as the Power of We Consortium, the Regional Growth Project, the Mayor’s citizens advisory groups, community summit processes.

 

5. USING THE MEDIA:  Improve the use of print and broadcast media to educate and illustrate the connections between land use and health, and personal impact of land use decisions on people’s lives.

 

LUHRT should explore ways to encourage community reporting on land use and health.  Specifically, it should develop communication avenues with media outlets that enable the LUHRT to frame and clarify messages regarding land use and health, with an emphasis on showing how land use decisions have a direct personal impact on people, on neighborhoods, and on the health of the community.  Healthy land use planning should be framed as a convergence of many community concerns:  health, faith, neighborhood vitality, economic development, social justice, etc.

 

All media outlets should be considered:  television, radio, newspaper and magazine articles, newsletters, reports, fact sheets, and electronic outlets such as blogs, web pages, and e-mail blasts.  The goals of this effort would be the same as that of Recommendation #2 (Community Education):  to create understanding of the influence of land use on health, and to empower people to get involved in shaping healthy land use policies. 

 

Actions the LUHRT could take in pursuit of this recommendation:

 

·         Arranging contacts with media personnel to clarify and illuminate “personal impact” in coverage of land use and health issues. 

·         Explore recruitment of interested journalists to be part of the LUHRT.

·         Creating stories to share with media outlets as the basis for articles, news stories, etc.

·         Using media to advance the concepts of community-based planning (in contrast to top-down, outside-in planning).