Exercise: Think of the community in which you live or a specific community in which
you work. Write down the community’s name. |
COMMUNITY HEALTH PARTICIPATORY PLANNING
WHAT IS IT?
Community Health Participatory Planning (CHPP) is a 12-week planning process for
community health interventions. The process is predicated on the concept of participants’ not
just reading about or being lectured to about living a healthy lifestyle but actually experiencing
what is involved and, at the same time, addressing the health needs of one’s own community
environment. Personal involvement is a key concept of participatory planning as a model for
community change.
The CHPP process is structured so that participants focus on the community while also
addressing their own personal risk factor reduction (for example, a person struggling with a
sedentary lifestyle, a heart condition, or diabetes). Participants are encouraged to identify and
work through barriers to living a healthy lifestyle. This is accomplished by looking at personal
habits and also societal and environmental influences. As a result, planning for both personal
and community change are informed by individual efforts toward health behavior change.
To get close and personal, think about:
• how the ability to select healthy foods for yourself, your children, or others in
the community may be influenced at the grocery store check-out counter
where candy, gum, and other tasty treats are always shelved. There are no
apples and other fruits so conveniently located for a quick snack.
• how one’s ability to be physically active in the evening may be influenced by
well-lit or dark sidewalks (if there are even sidewalks!).
• whether there is enough non-smoking seating available in local restaurants so
you can avoid being exposed to others’ smoke?
When pursued in conjunction with others in the community, individual efforts to change
behavior and be healthier can cause eye opening “ah hah” experiences. These “ah hahs” can
move individuals as well as a group of people to deeper thought and eventually to productive
problem solving.
| YOUR FIRST LEARNING TASK: Review the three CHPP examples in Appendix A. Questions about their contents are incorporated in subsequent exercises. |