Community Conditions

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About

Community conditions include the social and economic factors, physical environment and health infrastructure in which people are born, live, learn, work, play, worship and age. Community conditions are also referred to as the social determinants of health.

Relationship to health and equity

Community conditions shape the health and well-being of people and places. Access to health care is just one part of the story. Safe housing, jobs that pay a living wage, well-resourced schools and clean air and water are among the conditions that contribute. Health is also shaped by conditions that promote or prohibit our ability to feel safe, connected, happy and valued. Measuring community conditions over time can help us understand the opportunities everyone has to be healthy.

Not everyone has the opportunity for good health. There are clear patterns of advantage and disadvantage in the conditions of daily living and health outcomes. These unfair and unjust patterns impact all of us and have harmed racialized populations (populations perceived as being socially different from the racial or ethnic majority) and marginalized communities where our society has failed to invest in ways that value people.

Relationship to systems and structures

Community conditions are shaped by the actions of people, from the past to present, that create and maintain a set of written and unwritten rules. These rules reflect a system of values and beliefs played out in norms, laws, policies and institutional practices that structure our daily living conditions.

For example, decisions local officials make about affordable housing and where to locate it follow a history of federal redlining from the 1930s that systemically denied people credit based on the community make-up. Redlining systematically reinforced racially segregated communities, which meant that people and the places where they lived were excluded based on structural racism. History shows us that the impacts of unfair decisions can create persistent and compounding inequities by place and race. This continues today, where locating affordable housing in places where decision-makers have under-invested perpetuates inequities.

People make the decisions that create community conditions, and people can —and do — change them. We can build a society where every person is able to participate in shaping the conditions that affect our lives.

Additional Reading

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