In Your Community - Overview

What Makes a Community Healthy?

There are many factors that affect people’s physical, mental, social and financial well-being, which in turn affects their health. Having access to the following things helps make a community healthy:

• grocery stores selling healthy foods and farmers’ markets
• parks, playgrounds and other places to be active outside
• safe walkable streets
• public transportation
• neighbors who know each other
• healthcare

There are other factors that also important to the health of communities including:

• the condition of housing and schools
• the location of businesses
• the connection to jobs paying living wages,
• a thriving commercial sector that employs local residents with businesses that serve the neighborhood

With these things in place, people that live in the community will be likely to live healthier lives. Without them, they're more likely to suffer from obesity, asthma, heart disease, cancer and high blood pressure.

What Can You Do to Make Your Community Healthier?

As a community member, you have the power to advocate for healthy changes to your community. Start by bringing together a group of friends and neighbors, and talk about what needs to change. Develop a vision for where you want to take your community. Share your vision with neighborhood groups, elected officials and the agencies in your city or town that are responsible for the areas that need improvement.

It’s a lot of work, but community advocates have made great strides in their communities all around the country. We’ve provided tools that can help you get started and some stories of communities that have been successful in making healthy changes.

As a policy maker, you have the authority to implement changes and make your community healthier. Creating healthy environments cannot be done in isolation by any one organization; it requires coordinated and comprehensive efforts. Seize the opportunity to work with community coalitions to identify and prioritize changes. Bring together a cross-section of agencies including planning, housing, transportation, schools, public health and public safety to address the issues in a comprehensive way.

Consider public-private partnerships to help make policies and initiatives a reality. These partnerships can be used to create new parks and establish programs, bring grocery stores into underserved communities and refurbish housing.

What's Happening in MA to Make Healthier Communities?

We're working on a statewide "blueprint" to create healthier communities. This includes:

• Creating policies and regulations that support nutrition and physical activity
• Partnering with local communities to create healthier environments for residents
• Working with schools to help our kids stay healthy
• This website, which can help people take small steps to begin to eat better and move more

MassHealth also has a Wellness Program for its members that encourages people to take actions to prevent disease and illness in their lives. To find out more information about the MassHealth Wellness Program visit the MassHealth wellness website.

What’s Happening in Your Community?

We want to know about upcoming activities in your community that will get people eating better or moving more. Email us information about them, along with your contact information, and we’ll post them on a calendar to help get the word out.

We also want to know about what your community is doing to make healthy changes. If your city or town is taking steps to help residents eat better and move more, let us know. We’ll post the information on our website, and we may even feature you in our blog!