"Butte’s journey to promote health and well-being is one that illustrates the importance of collaboration and local investment for creating a shared value around health.”
—RAND Corporation
RWJF Culture of Health 5-Year Community Landscape Report: Butte, Montana
Report Feb-01-2022 2-min read
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Report Publish Date: February 2022
This report summarizes Butte, Mont.’s health, wellbeing, and equity journey from 2016 to 2021, as part of RWJF’s Sentinel Communities Surveillance project.
Primary Takeaways
“Butte’s community capacity to promote health, equity, and wellbeing remains a cross-sectoral collaborative effort to address community needs,” the authors write. “Although many anchor institutions continue to provide critical services, there has been some increase in community capacity, specifically around mental and behavioral health services, and a new homeless shelter was built.”
Butte’s major health and wellbeing initiatives focused on social engagement, outdoor activities, homelessness, and early childhood development. The authors noted a slight shift in the community’s narrative about health over the five years of the study, toward a focus on root causes of issues such as homelessness and substance misuse. Even so, the narrative of individual responsibility for health remained strong.
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 Butte.
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 2018 and fall 2021. Interviewees came from a number of different types of organizations and sectors.
How This Influences Change
“Progress [in Butte] has happened slowly, but measurably, as an appreciation for social determinants of health has expanded and local organizations remain committed to finding new ways to address both longstanding and emerging community needs,” the authors write. “Other communities can learn from Butte’s approaches to promoting health and well-being, and addressing the challenges encountered, to inform their own journeys.”
Research: Go Deeper
Over the past five years, the city of Butte has had a strong focus on community and its history as a mining town. Located in the Rocky Mountains of Montana, Butte leverages abundant natural resources for recreation, exercise, and building a sense of community. Healthcare systems and the health department play a pivotal role in providing health services, and over the past five years, nonprofits and other community-based organizations have expanded efforts to address food security and other basic needs, promote mental health, and foster early childhood development. In some cases, new collaborations have formed to address the region’s particularly pressing challenges, including behavioral health, substance use, and homelessness. Shifts in the health narrative have been modest over the past five years, with some increased recognition of the need to address more upstream drivers of health. However, less emphasis is being placed on health equity, with stakeholders acknowledging that there is still confusion around what this means, particularly in the context of a fairly homogeneous population.
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, February 2022
Figure 1: Population characteristics for Butte, Montana Page 2
Research Team
This study and report was conducted and created by:
- RAND Corporation
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