Health in Harmony: Integrating Community Strengths to Bridge Disparities

There is a need to shift from deficit-based environmental health approaches toward a more balanced framework that also considers community strengths at a granular level. The Universal Basic Neighborhood Framework integrates both qualitative and quantitative data across 35 health-supportive elements within topics of environmental, housing, social, and transportation domains, promoting an understanding of health as emerging from a range of environmental factors. The framework provides a more balanced approach by presenting both negative and positive health determinants, promotes leveraging community strengths and voice in public health interventions, and enables better understanding of community health needs and assets.