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Community health
and community capacity |
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The concept of community health is
part of the studies dealing with community well-being, quality-of
life-studies, community sustainability and community capacity (Beckley
and Burkosky, 1999). The concept was used in Canada, when the Canadian
Healthy Communities Project (that included more than 200 Canadian
communities) was promoted from 1998 to 1991. Patterson (1995) sees
the healthy community movement as an attempt to integrate research
on quality of life indicators with policy concerns regarding sustainable
development. The concept addresses both the well-being of community
residents and the health of the surrounding physical environment. |
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Within this framework, progress towards
becoming a healthy city is seen as the main goal. A healthy city
is most often defined as "one that is continually creating
and improving those physical and social environments and expanding
those community resources which enable people to support each other
in performing all the functions of life and in developing themselves
to their maximum potential" (Lane, 1989). The importance of
a healthy community concept has been the community-level efforts
to recognize the linkages between human behavior, the ecosystem
and human system well-being. Indicators of socio-economic status,
education, social support, clean and safe physical environment are
used for the evaluation of progress towards becoming a healthy community.
The concept is less popular in Scandinavia and Russia, where community
well-being or the sustainable community concept (i.e. Local agenda
21) are more in use. |
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The recognition of the linkages between
a safe physical environment and well-being (that should take place
at the personal, local, regional and federal levels), is especially
important for the Russian North. It is well known, that some territories
in the Russian North are extremely polluted. The Murmansk region,
one of the most urbanized industrial region in the Russian North
(with 92% of its population living in urban settlements), can serve
as an example. The urban settlements are in most cases, industrial
one-company towns. The territories around the big industrial enterprises
(e.g. the town of Monchegorsk where Severonikel combine is located)
are among the worst polluted areas in Russia. The research on the
connections between health status and environment in the Murmansk
region has shown very high indexes of correlation between the state
of the physical environment in the industrial towns and rates of
various diseases. The highest indexes of correlation between the
levels of atmospheric pollution and cases of illnesses were detected
for Monchegorsk (cooper and nickel as main pollutants), Nikel (sulfur
as main pollutant), and Murmansk (lead). It was found that atmospheric
cooper pollution was a major risk factor for chronic lung diseases,
asthma and stomach illnesses. Nickel pollution was a major risk
factor for asthma and blood diseases while sulfur pollution tightly
correlated with asthma, cancer and blood diseases (Zaidfudim &
Mizun, 1998). |
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As described above, the "ill
fate" of northern communities (often in the literal meaning)
is a reality for many. Many of these communities refuse to accept
their "ill fate" and possess a strength to respond to
external and internal stresses in order to create and take advantage
of opportunities to heal themselves as well as meet the needs of
residents (Kusel, 1996). This "ability" is conceptualized
as community capacity (Kusel, 1996; Doak and Kusel, 1997). |
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Evaluation of community capacity requires consideration of the
following components:
- Physical capital (the physical elements and resources in a
community and financial capital).
- Human capital (the skills, education, experiences and general
abilities of the residents).
- Social capital (the ability and willingness of residents to
work together for community goals) (Kusel, 1996).
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Community capacity has been identified
as an important factor influencing community well-being (Kusel and
Fortmann 1991, Beckley and Sprenger 1995, Doak, and Kusel, 1996).
Doak and Kusel define well-being as a function of both socioeconomic
status and community capacity. To measure the socioeconomic status
of communities they used indicators of housing tenure, poverty,
education level, and employment. Their results show that communities
with high socio-economic status do not necessarily have a high community
capacity. According to the authors, this weak correlation highlights
the critical role of social capital. While socioeconomic status
reflects the wealth of people in the community, community capacity
is about the willingness of these people to share wealth. |
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Recent research projects focused on
northern communities give many indications of the particular importance
of social capital for improving community well-being. For example,
research within the UNESCO MOST (Management of Social Transformation)
Circumpolar Coping Processes Project, dealing with North Atlantic
fishing based localities, revealed that strong social capital was
a major precondition for economic and social recovering after the
severe crisis in the fisheries that took place in the beginning
of the 90s. Within the project, numerous case studies revealed evidence
of the vital importance of local networks and trust for building
social capital in the communities. It was empirically proven that
overlap of networks and high levels of trust made it possible to
generate diverse new initiatives crucial for community survival
under new conditions (Aarsaether & Baerenholdt, 1998). |
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This brief essay on northern community
well-being leaves room for further investigations. However, it makes
the important contribution that efforts to improve the well-being
of the northern communities, first of all, should be directed to
ensure that communities can be actively engaged in the process of
improving their own well-being and this process should be based
on increasing local capacity with an emphasis on social capital
building. |
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