Healthcare Includes "Civic Health"
The Civic Health Compact is a guide to increasing civic participation and, thus, improving community health outcomes.
MIDDLETOWN, DE, USA, October 6, 2022 /EINPresswire.com/ -- The Civic Health Alliance, a non-partisan coalition of health and civic leaders advancing America’s health through civic engagement, released The Civic Health Compact, a new guidebook for health care systems to promote voter participation and other civic responsibilities to their patients to improve community health outcomes.
Recent studies have confirmed that there is a direct correlation between increased civic engagement and positive health outcomes at the community level. Conversely, communities with lower voter participation experience poor health outcomes and greater health inequities. Given our collective commitments to community and public health, we are compelled to use our positions in society to break down barriers to civic engagement and voting.
“The Compact offers health care leaders a set of practical ways to empower their staff, patients, and communities to be civically engaged and to contribute to addressing systemic inequities that impede health,” says Dr. Saranya Loehrer, co-founder of Civic Health Alliance.
Voter participation and all forms of civic engagement impact our health in so many ways: from maintenance and care of a community’s local infrastructure to national initiatives like early cancer detection screenings to equitable responses to disasters – community engagement matters.
The Civic Health Compact was co-designed over three months with over a dozen health and civic leaders from organizations, including; AltaMed, Vot-ER, Oak Street Health, Nurses Who Vote, Network for Public Health Law, APIAVote, and many others.
The Compact highlights evidence linking the connection between civic engagement and health. Studies have shown that:
(1) participation in civic engagement is associated with improved mental health, higher income, and higher education;
(2) voting is associated with better self-reported health in later years of life; and,
(3) civic activity is associated with improved well-being.
"As nurses, our priority is to advocate for the health of our patients, the Compact helps us do that by offering strategies for promoting civic engagement, centering the community's voice in health, and elevating the effort at every level of influence; individual, community, and policy. The work of this Compact will help unite us as a nation putting the health of our patients and communities front and center,” said Dr. Elizabeth Cohn RN PhD, Nurses Who Vote.
Civic Health Alliance Co-founders, Drs. Saranya Loehrer and Stella Safo, are available for press interviews.
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Civil Health Alliance is a non-partisan coalition of health and civic leaders allied around one common cause: the advancement of America’s health through civic engagement in care settings and communities.
Amy Thogmartin
Centivox
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