Helping Communities Create Healthy Places
Current Projects
Collaboration with CDOT
SHC is continuing its collaborative work with the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT), on how to best incorporate public health and equity considerations into transportation projects.
SHC hopes to take the lessons learned from its partnership with CDOT and FHWA and spread its expertise to similar projects with other local, state, federal, and national transportation agencies, and organizations nationwide!
Housing Livability Assessment Tool for Professionals (H-LAT Pro)
Research indicates a lack of suitable housing facilities to accommodate the growing number of older adults in Colorado and Nationwide. Safe and healthy housing environments are needed to accommodate older adults and people with differing abilities but can be beneficial for the broader population. To meet the need, and with funding from the Next50 Initiative, SHC created and is continuing to improve the Housing Livability Assessment Tool for older adults to facilitate aging-in-place. The Housing Livability Assessment Tool for Professionals (H-LAT Pro) is the first of its kind. To develop the tool, SHC reviewed over 20 research articles and reports from housing, geriatrics, and planning journals and other housing related resources. SHC conducted interviews at public low-income older adult housing facilities with residents and staff, in addition to completing site visits and pilot tested the tool at multiple housing facilities inside and outside of Colorado. The in-person interviews helped to not only enhance sections, but also to create new sections for the tool, including guidelines for management and operators that suggest what resources should be provided to residents and what policies should be in place, such as those that prevent bullying.
The purpose of the tool is to assess and score the health and safety of existing and future housing facilities and provide design, policy, and programming guidance to help older adults (age 60+) age-in-place. The tool aims to support residents of differing abilities, including those who may need to utilize a walker, wheelchair, or vision/hearing aids, focusing on improving lighting, flooring, ADA accessibility, and visual cues that can promote their health, safety, and security.
The tool is designed to be user-friendly and intended for use by housing professionals, operators, and managers of housing facilities, developers, and residents. The tool is a checklist, divided into three phases constituting five main sections that focus on various aspects of housing: outdoor spaces; fitness and wellness; social engagement/education opportunities and information sharing; common areas and entrances; inside apartment; and management.
With continued funding from the Next50 Initiative Foundation, SHC has refined and improved its housing assessment tools by conducting interviews with fire and emergency personnel to ensure the most accurate and best practices for the fire and emergency preparedness and response section of the housing tools.
For a copy of the H-LAT Pro Tool click here
Compendium for the Housing Livability Assessment Tool
To further elaborate on aspects of the tool, SHC created a compendium document to accompany the tool with in-depth explanations and descriptive pictures. The Compendium is intended to help housing professionals more thoroughly understand why certain measurements, design considerations, and policies are necessary to ensure the health, safety, and well-being of older adult residents. The compendium explanations and visuals, many acquired from the 2010 ADA Compliance guidelines, are intended to facilitate greater compliance, and ensure accuracy when following the H-LAT Pro indicators.
- Indicates the section of the tool the reader is retrieving information for.
- Indicates the type of indicator within the section, provides description, and potentially a picture that has measurements to show what part of the indicator is being described.
- Indicates where the information for the specific indicator can be found via a credible or evidence-based resource or from resident interviews. This provides link to this resource. Each indicator may have more than one resource.
- Indicates the page(s) to find the information about the specific aspect in the resource.
The Housing Livability Assessment Tool for Residents (H-LAT Res)
While creating the tool for professionals, SHC identified a parallel need for a tool just for residents, enabling them to assess their own housing properties. To simplify the tool for those who are not public health or housing professionals, SHC modified the professional tool to create a version specifically catered to older adult residents and their families, the Housing Livability Assessment Tool for Residents (H-LAT Res). A questionnaire was developed and approximately 25 interviews of older adult residents were be completed over the course of several months. The interviews were offered through several mediums to accommodate residents during the COVID-19 pandemic, including by phone, Zoom or iPhone Facetime.
For a copy of the H-LAT Res Tool click here
Nationwide Education, Marketing and Social Media Campaign
Want daily updates and content from SHC, click our social media links below!
To reach a broader range of audiences, SHC is now active on several social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Posts will disseminate interesting research and facts related to the social determinants of health, upcoming projects, and much more, spreading our mission of creating safe and healthy communities for all.
https://facebook.com/SafeHealthyComm
https://www.instagram.com/safe_and_healthy_communities/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/safe-and-health-communities
SHC invites all to follow our journey and even contribute to our projects to ensure health and safety for all.
Safe and Healthy Communities is committed to making its websites and digital content accessible to the widest possible audience. We are continuously working to increase the accessibility and usability of our digital content. We strive to maintain conformance to W3C’s Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 as well as digital document accessibility standards.
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