New Website: PolicyLink Center for Health and Place

Posted by on February 5, 2007

PolicyLink Launches New Center for Health and Place

Since our founding in 1999, PolicyLink has worked with partners around the country to illustrate that where you live affects how you live. Our equitable development approach sheds light on the link between neighborhood conditions and the health of its residents, and promotes policies and strategies that eliminate local and regional disparities.

The PolicyLink Center for Health and Place builds upon years of research, collaboration, and community engagement. It weaves research and action into policy initiatives to ensure that everyone?especially those in low-income communities and communities of color?can live, work, and play in healthy environments.

“We need fresher and bolder approaches to policies that address the link between health and place,” said Angela Glover Blackwell, founder and CEO of PolicyLink. “Since policy informs the answers to the questions, ‘who benefits, who pays, and who decides,’ we must work collaboratively and aggressively to advance policies that ensure everyone an equitable share of our nation’s resources. That has been the continued mission of PolicyLink and that’s the vision for our new center.”

The center’s primary goal will be to push for more effective health policies and practices; conduct innovative research; shape public opinion through integrated communications and advocacy strategies; and build the capacity of community leaders, organizations, coalitions, and policymakers to craft effective approaches and to collaborate on strategies for policy change.

Mildred Thompson, the center’s director, leads a team of professionals?with expertise in public health, urban and regional planning, public policy, clinical psychology, and communications?in creating solutions to old problems. “So many of America’s biggest health problems are directly linked to the environments we live in,” said Mildred Thompson. “Whether it’s advocating for legislation to help build grocery stores in woefully underserved communities or eliminating environmental factors that account for the recent alarming jump in childhood asthma, we can advance public policies that lead to better, healthier, stronger neighborhoods.”

For a complete list of our initiatives and to partner with us to build an equitable policy agenda, go to http://www.policylink.org/healthandplace.