Community Participation Report

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Executive Summary

Hearing Community Voices was designed as a community meeting to gather input from community residents regarding their health concerns as well as health priorities as they relate in the community setting. Researchers on the Bexar County Community Health Assessment project hosted the meeting. The meeting focused on gathering ideas from participants regarding two themes: the physical environment and social environment. Participants were specifically asked their concerns, solutions, and next steps.

Concerns relating to the physical environment of the community revolved around urban design and basic infrastructure.

Participants ranked as highest priority concerns about the physical environment as:

• adult education about the physical environment
• neighborhood safety
• smart growth

The solutions participants ranked as highest priority for addressing the physical environment include:

• improving both city infrastructure and mass transit
• strengthening community relationships
• more neighborhood communication and community action
• volunteer programs, creating community relationships also were ranked as ways of addressing problems

Priority concerns about the social environment include:

• health illiteracy
• lack of access to higher education
• addressing social concerns and poverty

Suggestions for improving social conditions throughout the community include:

• addressing universal healthcare
• improving education and outreach programs to encourage participation in higher education

Participants were asked whether there were next steps to follow-up on their concerns and their solutions regarding the physical and social environments. Suggestions from the participants included collective and individual action. Specifically mentioned were:

• form task groups to investigate the problems voiced at the meeting,
• address existing resources and to have monthly meetings
• to start with ourselves and engage ourselves
• have meetings of similar groups around the county
• meet your neighbors, and talk the talk: eat better and exercise

Community Health priorities identified in the meeting were used as part of a request from the Bexar County Community Health Assessment for proposals from community collaborations to address one or more community concerns. This mini-grant program was intended to provide up to $10,000 to community collaboratives to propose a project with an achievable community health goal. The goal was to initiate projects that would bring community residents and community-based organizations to develop a project that would improve community health. A condition of the RFP was that the group collect information that demonstrated the need for the project in their community.