Transforming Communities: Lessons Learned from More Than 30 Years of Healthy Communities Efforts

Minimum Specifications and Fundamental Shifts for Transforming Communities

The amount of new and developing evidence and knowledge that has been generated across the Healthy Communities movement and other key community change efforts in the past few decades has been transformative. Although this timeframe represents a period of major advances and notable efforts, the progress has been significantly outpaced by social and environmental issues facing communities today-issues related to health, quality of life, and economic stability. As we usher in the next important phase of community change work, we have the opportunity to step back and take stock of what we have learned to make important connections between key advances, identify the commonalities across the wide landscape of community work, and upgrade our frameworks to address complex change more effectively.

Sifting through the history and evidence, Transforming Communities-Lessons Learned from More Than 30 Years of Healthy Communities Efforts reveals that the next generation of this work requires more than an upgrade; instead, what is needed is a different operating system-one that can address the larger landscape of community change work which includes the interconnected domains of the economy, education, health, and the environment. Creating a different operating system requires changing how we see and think about this work and our communities, how the work is structured, how the parts are connected and interact, and how community partners function together to achieve change and progress.

In Transforming Communities, Joey Vrazel draws on the latest research and her professional experiences working at the local, state, and national levels to outline and describe the minimum specifications and fundamental shifts that are necessary to create a new operating system for communities and guide the next generation of progress.