"Allegheny County is now facing the next big challenge: Ensuring that progress is not fleeting and is foundational to systemic change."
—RAND Corporation
RWJF Culture of Health 5-Year Community Landscape Report: Allegheny County, Pennsylvania
Report Feb-01-2022 3-min read
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Report Publish Date: February 2022
This report summarizes Allegheny County, Pennsylvania's health, wellbeing, and equity journey from 2016 to 2021, as part of RWJF’s Sentinel Communities Surveillance project.
Primary Takeaways
“Allegheny County’s capacity for addressing health and well-being includes large healthcare systems, several influential philanthropic foundations, and a wide range of community-based organizations,” the authors write. Collaboration was strong at time of writing, but the partners had struggled to fully incorporate community input.
Long-term plans, such as Plan for a Healthier Allegheny and Live Well Allegheny, had given the county momentum on the road to a Culture of Health. The plans had recently begun to include equity considerations and focus on issues such as Black maternal and infant health and climate change.
Overview and Objectives
Begun in 2016, RWJF’s Sentinel Communities Surveillance project tracks how a Culture of Health is developing in 29 communities across the country. The authors wanted to describe key challenges, opportunities, and insights in Allegheny County.
Hypothesis or Approach
The authors gathered information from phone interviews with Sentinel Community leaders; online, published, and local materials and media about the communities; and data sources including the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, the CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, County Health Rankings, and state and local data collection systems.
For this report, the authors conducted 31 hourlong, semi-structured interviews between early 2017 and fall 2021. Interviewees came from a number of different types of organizations and sectors.
How This Influences Change
“Allegheny County has made significant progress in its recognition and actions around health equity, yet the county has room for improvement in terms of reaching a shared definition of health equity and ensuring that all community members are on board,” the authors write.
Research: Go Deeper
Allegheny County’s awareness of health inequities and early steps to address them in 2017 have continued to progress over the past five years. With new understanding of health and health equity, there has been policy action, such as declaring racism a public health crisis and incorporating equity positions in government departments. The county continues to be bolstered by its array of anchor institutions that serve as both economic drivers and employers. These institutions include universities, healthcare systems, and philanthropic foundations, but concerns about how community organizations are represented in leadership and decision-making on behalf of health, well-being, and equity remain. As the community continues to grapple with the lasting effects of systemic racism, there are still very visible disparities between White communities and Black communities, particularly those with lower socioeconomic status. Various initiatives are in place to combat these disparities, including the
Eco-Innovation District and Opportunity Zones, though with this increase in economic development in historically Black neighborhoods comes the continued risk of gentrification. Guided by the Allegheny County Health Department (ACHD), the community is working to address persistent health issues including maternal and child health, environmental risks that lead to diseases such as asthma and cancer, and the opioid epidemic as well as embracing newer conceptualizations of health that recognize the health impacts of community violence and the role of mental health.
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, February 2022
Figure 1: Population characteristics for Allegheny County Page 2
Research Team
This study and report was conducted and created by:
- RAND Corporation
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