A fairly new area of expertise, there are a growing number of excellent careers in health community design. What is this area of expertise all about? What are some of the promising career options in this area? Let’s take a look.
What It’s About
Health community design starts with the concept of community health. In every community across the country, there are unique attributes that affect the people living there. These attributes can be any number of things, natural or man-made, and affect the quality of human life. Some examples might be mountains, lakes, a chemical plant, landfill, wildlife reserve, or even a library.
Health community design is therefore the use of this knowledge in planning and building a community. According to the Massachusetts Health and Human Services Department, one could look at it like this:
“Healthy Community Design focuses on making our communities healthier places to live, work and play – where walking and biking are easier, and where being physically active is a natural part of your day. Healthy community design brings evidence-based health strategies into community planning, transportation, and land-use decisions. (e.g. whether our homes are near schools, recreation areas, and businesses)”
Employers
In all of society, the majority of civic duties typically fall to the hands of government and organizational causes. This field of work deals mainly with communities and thus is a matter primarily entertained by organizations and government departments. Therefore, anyone working this field will most likely be employed by a government department or a non-profit organization that works with the community.
Example Careers Within
Within the field of health community design, there have continued to emerge more careers every year. While the field is relatively new, the disciplines used in these new career choices are not. Disciplines like psychology, public hygiene, public health, and structural design are all needed. With this all said, let’s take a look at three, exemplary careers in health community design.
Community Psychologist
A community psychologist is a psychologist that focuses on the health of the community as well as those factors that can affect it. Usually working for local government, these experts go into the field and examine the psyche of the masses. What elements are the most troubling to those here? How can we offset or negate this problem via community interventions? These are the kinds of questions the community psychologist must work to answer.
Urban Planner
Urban planning is no new concept but its use in health community design is. Urban planners in this area are the sort of middle-person between local finances, government, the community, and other experts in the field. They must plan successful infrastructure and community layouts that will encourage community health and discourage the detriments to it. Failure in planning can mean for generations doomed with unnecessary troubles and a huge cost to redesign and restructure the problems away.
Director of Community Health
The director of community health is the head of the responsibility of maintaining and improving the health of a community over time. They will tend to work with one community from out of the offices of a government or organization’s facility. Regularly consulting with all areas of the community including experts like the community psychologist, government officials, and others, the director of community health oversees the entirety of the continued health of an area.
Related Resource: Quality Improvement Manager in Health
Community health affects us all. This rising, new field of community management will therefore oversee this area of our health into the future. These are some of the careers in health community design as well as the basics of this newly emerging form of public health advocacy.