A key aspect of healthy communities is, well, health. Residents often are highly concerned about the physical and mental health of themselves, their families, and their neighbors -- which means that exploring local health topics can be an especially compelling way to engage your community.

A leading program for training professional journalists in innovative ways to cover the intersection of health and place offers tips that apply to any effort to inform and engage communities.

What is "health and place?" According to Michelle Levander, editor-in-chief of Reporting on Health (an online community for people passionate about fostering great health and medical coverage of communities), it's about taking a holistic view that encompasses far more than just healthcare.

"Typically in news, health gets conflated with healthcare -- that the health of a community depends on whether people have access to healthcare," said Levander. "However, a lot of research shows that people's health and quality of life is largely determined by all this things that happen to you before you get to the doctor's office. Community conditions strongly influence your health, and it's often specific to where you live and work."

An obvious example of the relationship between health and place is pollution. When people live downwind or downstream from factories, feedlots, waste sites or busy freeways, they often have a higher incidence of negative health impacts -- such as asthma, cancer, birth defects, or lead poisoning.

But place-related health impacts can be far more subtle. For instance, if it's difficult or dangerous to walk, bike, or exercise in your community (or at least in some parts of town), or if most residents spend a lot of time commuting by car, this can contribute to a sedentary lifestyle, which increases risk of heart disease and other problems. Similarly, a lack of easy local access to affordable, fresh, healthy food can increase local obesity rates. And if many local seniors live fairly isolated lives, this can exacerbate the impacts of a wide range of age-related health problems such as dementia, malnutrition or falls.

Data and narrative storytelling are powerful tools for clarifying and fostering discourse on complex local health issues. The California Endowment funds several Reporting on Health initiatives to support and strengthen local health coverage. These include fellowships for professional journalists (in California and nationwide), grants for community health reporting projects, and an online community for sharing experiences in covering health and place.

The National Health Journalism fellowship (currently accepting applications through April 1) has fostered several excellent examples of data-supported health-and-place coverage.

For instance, Karen Bouffard of the Detroit News used her fellowship training and grant to produce an in-depth series on the dangers faced by children in Detroit. Levander explained, "Bouffard went into the fellowship with a hypothesis that Detroit isn't the best place to be a child. She crunched the numbers on local data about the causes of death for anyone under 18, and compared this to other metro areas. She found that in fact Detroit is one of the most dangerous places in the U.S to be a child. This story was particular resonant with Detroit residents."

Health and place coverage can happen in smaller projects too -- from individual news stories and blog posts; to unearthing, publicizing, and discussing important local health-related statistics (or framing statistics with useful local context).

Getting started covering health and place

When looking for important, engaging health topics in your community, Levander recommends starting with the data. "In almost every community there's lots of free, publicly available health data and reports," she said. "Start with your county or city health department, see what data they have available and what reports they've been publishing. If they've identified a prominent issue, there's probably a report on it."

Also, use Census data to develop a demographic profile of community -- by ethnicity, age ranges, income, and other factors. Another good initial step is to examine data, reports and plans on local transportation infrastructure and development/land use. "Everything that's strongly relevant to quality of life, how people eat, or how they get around -- see if there's data to quantify it," she said.

In addition, health department officials and local organizations that focus on health issues can be helpful in understanding which issues create the biggest or thorniest local health problems. Assemble a local cast of experts -- including perhaps instructors in public health from local universities or colleges.

Levander recommends joining the Reporting on Health Community if you're covering local health, or want to learn how. It's free, and open to anyone interested in covering local health. Members can post stories about their efforts, challenges, and successes; as well as ask questions and participate in discussions.

Professional journalists working with or for news organizations -- or on independent projects with arrangements to publish their work in news outlets -- can apply for the National Health Journalism Fellowship, or for grants from the Dennis A. Hunt Fund. The deadline for both programs is April 1.

Community foundations that focus on local health issues might want to consider supporting local information and engagement efforts that include journalistic coverage of health and place. This can complement other campaigns and programs, and fuel discourse with community members and local officials and stakeholders.