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Case Examples > City of Richmond General Plan Health Policy Element

City of Richmond General Plan Health Policy Element

Purpose

Develop a comprehensive community health and wellness element for the City of Richmond General Plan update that will ensure that the health of Richmond residents is a critical component of policy options guiding the future development of the city.

Lead Organizations

PolicyLink and Moore Iacofano Goltsman (MIG), Inc.

PolicyLink
Jme McLean, Research Associate
Victor Rubin, Vice President for Research
1438 Webster St, Suite 303, Oakland, CA 94612
Phone (510) 663-2333
MIG, Inc.
Daniel Iacofano, Principal
Vikrant Sood, Project Manager
MIG Headquarters, 800 Hearst Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94710
Phone (510) 845-7549

Goals

  1. Include a health policy element in the City of Richmond General Plan.
  2. Adopt health promoting policies in General Plan.
  3. Document process for developing and including a health policy element for use as model by other cities.
  4. Create training and presentation materials for public officials, planners, community-based organizations, policy advocates, and philanthropists.

Major Activities

  1. Convening of technical advisory group
  2. Assessment of existing conditions related to health in Richmond and health impact assessment of plan
  3. Public health policy analysis
  4. Development of health policy element in Richmond’s General Plan
  5. Development of training and presentation materials around process and outcomes

The City of Richmond has contracted with MIG, Inc. – a private planning and design consulting firm founded in 1981 with extensive experience in engaging communities in planning processes for public and private agencies – to undertake a comprehensive General Plan update. MIG will incorporate a health element into the larger plan, which would represent the first time that any city in the U.S. made such an explicit commitment to considering health outcomes through its general plan. While not included in the original scope of work, the City of Richmond has approved the creation of a health policy element (HPE). Because of the precedent-setting nature of the project, the resulting plan will be widely publicized, and lessons learned will be disseminated to a broad array of audiences.

PolicyLink will serve as the fiscal agent, provide oversight of the project, provide advice on design and implementation, assist in capturing lessons learned, and disseminate those lessons to key audiences.

project partners