Since the World Health Organization declaration of 1984, the concept of a healthy community has gained national and international currency. Professional journals, conferences, and (more recently) Web sites devoted to healthy communities have proliferated. At UMass/Lowell, healthy community thinking has been featured in a lunchtime discussion series, highlighted in a planned public health initiative, and embedded into this call for papers. 

But the popularity of this concept does not necessarily make it useful in practice. Nor is its apparent wholesomeness a substitute for actual community accomplishment. The utility of healthy community conceptualizations depends upon measurable improvements in predefined social and economic activities at the level where people lead their lives. These have been less well examined. 

This paper proposes to study the social and economic impacts of healthy community initiatives, with special attention to Massachusetts. In our state, healthy community planning was first coordinated through the convening of a Healthy Communities Summit in Boston on November, 1994. From that Summit came the creation of a statewide Healthy Communities Massachusetts Network, founded in 1995 with major foundation backing. (The author was directly involved in organizing both events.) Since then, healthy community activities in the state have grown to the point where over 60 separate such initiatives have been identified and recorded in a directory scheduled to be released in November, 1998. 

However, the outcomes of these healthy community activities have not been evaluated systematically. We do not know what degree and kind of social and economic development they have specifically produced, sustainable or otherwise. We do not know what equity has been created, in either sense of the word. Nor do we know to what extent public institutions of higher education have been involved in this work, or how their involvement could be made more productive. We ought to know the answers to these questions; and we can. 

The method for studying these outcomes will include (1) analysis of the published reports of healthy community initiatives in Massachusetts, (2) a separate analysis of existing evaluation reports, (3) a survey of identified leaders of such initiatives, and (4) more detailed interviews with a randomly selected subset of leaders. The number of healthy community initiatives in the state is small enough so that all of them can be included in the sample. One particular focus of the analysis will be upon the training received by the primary leaders of healthy community initiatives, with special reference to university involvement in such training.

Based on this analysis, the paper proposes to make recommendations for improving the structure and function of healthy community initiatives, so as to maximize local community impact. It also aims to recommend policies through which the public higher education system might become part of institutionalized efforts in that direction. The conclusions may establish both guidelines and an agenda for university-wide involvement in healthy community and related community-building initiatives across the state in the future.