The U.S. Department
of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Initiative
for Renewal Communities, Empowerment Zones and
Enterprise Communities (RC/EZ/EC) is important
to development within distressed urban and rural
areas nationwide. The RC/EZ/EC Initiative assists
residents and businesses in economically depressed
areas opportunities and resources to improve their
neighborhoods. The Initiative has helped communities
create jobs, improve housing and healthcare in
urban areas, improving the lives of thousands
of Americans. For more information about the HUD
and the RC/EZ/EC Initiative, visit http://www.hud.gov/offices/cpd/ezec/index.cfm,
The Rural Empowerment Zone and Enterprise Community
program is designed to afford rural communities
real opportunities growth and revitalization.
The framework of the program is embodied in four
key principles of Economic Opportunity, Sustainable
Community Development, Community-based Partnerships,
and Strategic Vision for Change. For information
on the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Rural
RC/EZ/EC program, visit http://www.ezec.gov/.
Six
Components of Building a Healthy RC/EZ/EC
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Good Health - Good Economy |
Mobilizing
Partnerships and Making Contacts |
Evaluating
Your Efforts |
Overall, health
impacts employers, individuals and communities
in numerous ways.
- Work is central to social status.
- Unemployment is associated with a
large number of health risks.
- Work influences the health of families
and children.
- Income inequity affects health.
Planning for a
Healthy RC/EZ/EC
- Choosing the Right Approach for Health
- Assessing Needs and Assets
- Setting Priorities and Objectives
- Advisory Groups
- From Plan to Action
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- Choosing the Right Approach
- Defining Roles
- Keeping it Going
- Advisory Groups
Priority Health
Issues
- Preventive Services
- Primary Care
- Health Insurance
- Substance Abuse
- Environmental Health
- Eliminating Barriers and Disparities
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Evaluating your health planning efforts
can improve upon existing programs, assist
with planning future efforts, the case
for funding needs or refocusing of resources,
and add a sense of accountability to your
programs. You can evaluate the conceptualization
and design of a program, monitor program
implementation, or assess the effectiveness
and efficiency.
Funding
Identifying funding sources for health
planning efforts is a constant challenge.
However, there are a wide-variety of federal
grants, foundations, corporations, and
philanthropies that focus on community
development efforts and can be tapped
by RC/EZ/ECs.
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Help is just a click away at
http://aspe.hhs.gov/ezec
Since RC/EZ/ECs represent some
of the nation's most economically disadvantaged
and ethnically diverse urban and rural areas,
ASPE has initiated a multi-faceted technical
assistance project that will build their capacity
to eliminate health disparities and incorporate
health improvement into their RC/EZ/EC economic
and community development initiatives.
Recognizing the importance of
partnerships and the need to keeps its members
involved and energized, The City of Burlington,
Vermont, EC's Public Safety Project emphasizes
leadership development and problem solving.
To keep its community interested and involved,
the EC offers a Public Safety Leadership Development
Series with free monthly community dinners and
workshops for any interested residents. Topics
include meeting facilitation, resolving neighborhood
conflicts and finding solutions for problem
properties. The Public Safety Project raises
$10,000 annually to be used through a grant
program. This program distributes up to $1,000
per project neighborhood associations for the
use of clean-up projects, block parties, pet-awareness
events, installation of deadbolt locks and motion
sensor lights and park improvements.
The Lowell, MA EC is administered
by a grassroots board consisting of elected
and appointed members drawn entirely from EC
residents and small business owners. Most of
the board's members are chosen by EC residents
through a full-scale public nomination and Strategic
Vision and Community-Based Partnerships elections
process. One member represents one of the EC's
eight census tracts. In addition to elected
representatives, the city government appoints
seven board members to ensure ethnic, gender
and age diversity. These include youth and senior
citizen representatives as well as a representative
from one of Lowell's many minority groups. Representatives
of key public and private institutions- whose
support is also crucial for achieving the community's
goals- are invited to serve on EC advisory committees.
One project located within the
EC is the Lowell Community Health Center's teen
pregnancy prevention program, known as the Lowell
Teen Coalition. A similar type of advisory group
oversees the Coalition. Its members include
representatives from city government, the business
community, the University of Massachusetts at
Lowell, juvenile probation, youth program staff,
citizen activists and others. The advisory board
looks at the direction of the program and recommends
new initiatives and directions for the program.
Current initiatives include investigating how
appropriate the abstinence message is to the
teens it serves as well as ways in which it
can reach out to middle school students. It
is then the responsibility of the Executive
Director, who is also the Program Coordinator,
to seek out resources to fulfill the mission
suggested by the board. The program uses EC
funds for various teen leadership initiatives
including increasing youth membership in community
organizations, funding recognition programs
and development of leadership training programs.
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