THRIVE: Moving from Understanding to Action on Health Equity

Students in the town of Planada, CA, sat at tables with enlarged maps of their community and brightly colored sticky notes. During their participation in an interactive THRIVE (Tool for Health and Resilience in Vulnerable Environments) workshop, they began to understand the impact of the environment on behavior. Fourteen-year-old Jonathan noted, “If we ask our mothers to go outside, they say no – because of traffic or because it’s dark. There are no streetlights.” Jonathan did not know at the time that this workshop would launch his path as a youth advocate who challenges place-based injustice and promotes health equity.

Created by Prevention Institute (PI) in 2002 with support from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health (OMH), THRIVE is a framework and tool to help communities develop a shared understanding of how community determinants of health, including factors in the physical/built, social-cultural, and economic/education environments impact health, safety, and health equity. THRIVE supports communities in moving from understanding to assessment and action for change at the community level.

In 2011 OMH provided funding to the National Network of Public Health Institutes (NNPHI) and PI to update THRIVE and train 12 member institutes to implement THRIVE in their communities. In addition to Planada, THRIVE has been used in numerous urban, suburban, and rural communities across the U.S., with community partners and residents from low-income communities of color, including youth, immigrants and refugees.

Central California Regional Obesity Prevention Program (CCROPP) staff attended a THRIVE training, and in turn conducted three trainings, including one for the Student Education Empowerment Development Squad (SEEDS) in Planada. Planada, a predominantly low-income Latino community has entire neighborhoods with no sidewalks, no street lights, no crossing lanes or slower speed zones around schools. As a result, SEEDS youth decided to focus on enhancing safety near schools and on other key routes in their town. Jonathan and others presented to their county board of supervisors, testified before a California Senate Committee and worked on other environmental and transportation justice efforts. They ensured that the Planada Pedestrian Improvement Plan included youth perspectives on environmental change to improve pedestrian safety.

With deepening income inequalities in the U.S., and a rapidly diversifying population, comprehensive efforts to improve social determinants of health, especially at the community level, have never been more critical. In this time of growing challenges and opportunities for change, THRIVE is a framework and tool that can continue to help promote improvements across communities and thereby, promote health, safety and health equity.

Lisa Fujie Parks is a Program Manager at Prevention Institute in Oakland, CA.