Training New Community Health, Food Service, and Environmental Protection Workers Could Boost Health, Jobs, and Growth

General job training programs, and separate disease prevention or health promotion programs are usually viewed as two different strategies for reducing poverty and promoting community development. We propose that with better alignment of the strategies, new jobs with the potential to simultaneously improve population health, lower the cost of health care, and reduce unemployment could be created and filled.

Initiatives for three types of entry-level positions—in the fields of community health, environmental remediation and protection, and food preparation—show particular promise as vehicles for health and economic improvement at the individual and community levels. Building on current federal programs, new pilot projects financed by federal funding should be created to test and refine such initiatives and their impact and assemble an evidence base for future policy action.

Health Affairs November Issue Focuses on "Linking Community Development and Health"

  1. 1 How the Health and Community Development Sectors are Combining Forces to Improve Health and Well-Being
  2. 2 Community Development Efforts Offer a Major Opportunity to Advance Americans' Health
  3. 3 Partnerships Among Community Development, Public Health, and Health Care Could Improve the Well-Being of Low-Income People
  4. 4 Despite Obstacles, Considerable Potential Exists for More Robust Federal Policy on Community Development and Health
  5. 5 Bringing Researchers and Community Developers Together to Revitalize a Public Housing Project and Improve Health
  6. 6 Community Health Centers and Community Development Financial Institutions
  7. 7 Training New Community Health, Food Service, and Environmental Protection Workers Could Boost Health, Jobs, and Growth
  8. 8 The PROMETHEUS Bundled Payment Experiment
  9. 9 Mayo Clinic Employees Responded to New Requirements for Cost Sharing by Reducing Possibly Unneeded Health Services Use
  10. 10 Gaps in Residency Training Should be Addressed to Better Prepare Doctors for a Twenty-First-Century Delivery System
  11. 11 How the National Prevention Council Can Overcome Key Challenges and Improve Americans' Health
  12. 12 Evolving Brand-Name and Generic Drug Competition May Warrant a Revision of the Hatch-Waxman Act
  13. 13 Strengthening Children's Oral Health

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