Community-Based Asset Security: A Scoping Review

To explore how and what programs or projects address asset security at the community level as a social determinant of health.

To conduct a scoping review following Preferred Reporting Items for Systemic Reviews and Meta-analyses guidelines, the databases searched included CINAHL, EconLit, Embase, Pubmed/Medline, and the Sociological Collection of EBSCOhost.

Keywords used for article identification were ("asset" AND "community") OR ("asset security" AND "community"). Studies were included if published between 1990 and 2019, written in English, and published in a peer-review journal. Reference lists of selected articles were also reviewed for additional articles. Two authors reviewed titles and abstracts separately, then reviewed full-texts for sample selection.

After identifying 2,585 articles, researchers refined the final sample to 28 articles. Programs or projects within the sample focused on direct financial interventions or indirect interventions. Direct interventions included financial programs, such as Individual Development Accounts, or ownership opportunities, such as cooperatives or microenterprises. Indirect interventions included those focused on the built environment, such as asset mapping to identify a community's resources, or focused on education, such as those for social workers.

Financial programs, ownership opportunities, assessments of the built environment, and targeted education complement one another to influence a community's assets from many angles. Income inequality has evolved from repeated institutionalized practices that inadvertently reinforce that inequality. Published literature emphasizes the local nature of needs and challenges, culturally responsive efforts, and that observing an impact often requires longitudinal efforts.