Stories From the Field – Morehouse School of Medicine

The Why:

East Point is a small city located in Fulton County, Georgia that has committed to reversing pervasive health challenges affecting their community. East Point has disproportionately high rates of chronic conditions like diabetes, obesity, and hypertension and in 2022, the only hospital in south Fulton County, which was located in East Point, announced its closure. East Point residents’ health challenges are driven largely by social factors—92% of East Point’s housing supply is located in “revitalization zones,” areas ripe for development and displacement; 25% of residential land is within 1,000 feet of industrial land, exposing residents to environmental contaminants; and 91% of residents live more than a mile from a grocery store.

The What and The How:

In 2021, Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM) partnered with the City of East Point to identify and advance policy solutions to address the community’s health challenges. Leveraging legal epidemiology with a commitment to centering community from conceptualization to completion, MSM approach enlivened the community power building principles of:   

• Acting Collectively: The project established a community advisory board comprised primarily of East Point residents to guide the project and hired a community health worker, who was also an East Point resident, to engage the community and increase awareness of health challenges and policy opportunities. Through community engagement activities, East Point residents expressed their desire for a comprehensive approach to improving health through policy. Around this time, East Point was updating its Comprehensive Plan, a state-mandated policy that guides local land use, development, and zoning decisions. The Comprehensive Plan update emerged as an opportunity to incorporate community health promotion into policy.
• Shifting Narratives: The MSM team conducted a rapid policy mapping study to identify whether and to what extent other municipalities’ comprehensive plans mention and prioritize health and include community health data. The study found that few comprehensive plans mentioned health, included health-related data, nor acknowledged the impact of the policy on health. The findings were used to inform the policymaking process and provided important motivation to position East Point as a model for other cities to promote and prioritize community health. In 2023, East Point City Council adopted their Comprehensive Plan Update, which included a commitment to health promotion, data on the health challenges experienced by East Point residents, and named “health equity” as a community goal.
• Authentic Engagement: Over the course of the project, more than 2,000 East Point residents were engaged and over 200 community assets related to health and wellness were identified. In recognition of the community’s collective power to effect policy change and to amplify their voice in telling their story, the project used Photovoice, a culturally grounded research method wherein photographs, often taken by participants, are used to explore and address community needs, stimulate individual empowerment, and create a critical dialogue to advocate for community change. The photovoice study was curated into an art exhibit, a digital exhibit, and four photographs permanently installed across the city, including City Hall.
• Cultivating Ongoing Relationships: Beyond the deep partnership cultivated with East Point’s community throughout this initiative, the integration of “health equity” as an explicit goal in the East Point Comprehensive Plan provides sustained opportunity for collective engagement to assure community health and wellbeing through the City’s planning, programs, policies, and decision-making The East Point community’s experiences and accomplishments through this project have created a model for other cities to engage, mobilize, and achieve policy change to improve health.