84
6.9
Recommendations
Communities wishing to leverage the UN’s SDGs
to help improve quality of life for their residents
and for the global population are advised to follow a particular course of action. These recommendations may be followed “as is,” or they may
be adapted to specific needs within the
community.
The first step is to establish the conditions
necessary for community involvement. These
conditions are detailed earlier in this paper: commitment to well-being for all; population measures of well-being; and ability to coordinate
action. Details may be adapted to fit the needs of
specific communities, but the process should
remain essentially intact.
The next step is to align your work within the
framework of the SDGs by selecting those that
are most relevant to your situations or that are
most manageable and attainable. For example,
large municipalities may have more resources to
implement a more complete list, while smaller
towns may be limited by lesser funding and fewer
committee participants. The goal is to develop a
plan that fits a community’s particular needs and
resources. Highly visible and decisive results
from these activities will help the community
expand into other SDGs. Conversely, taking on
too many goals at the onset will stall progress and
discourage further participation. Not all SDGs
need be implemented at once.
In Santa Cruz County, the United Way took on
a leadership role for developing the CAP, with
participation from many other local agencies and
organizations—hospitals, educational institutions, social service agencies, private individuals,
nonprofit organizations, and other entities that
saw mutual benefit from this type of cooperation.
As a group, they helped determine the types of
data they would require to achieve the Social
Determinants of Health and, later, the SDGs.
Participating
organizations
pooled
their
resources, according to their abilities, to help
fund the CAP. Because the project budget has
been responsibly managed, the CAP has remained
sustainable throughout the years, becoming the
longest-running project of its type.
Next, conducting statistically valid, professionally administered surveys will provide the
necessary data for a snapshot of current qualityof- life conditions and—with each successive
survey—a comparison with past conditions.
These surveys should generate data that can be
applied to a community’s chosen SDGs, enabling
a clear illustration of current status and a point
from which to formulate improvement goals.
Note that it is important to engage professionals in creating the surveys to ensure that they are
worded in a neutral fashion, so the questions do
not compel the respondent to reply in a particular
way. Professional survey organizations also will
(or should) be involved with an institutional
review board to ensure that respondents can feel
secure in the knowledge that honest responses
will not put them in jeopardy, legally or otherwise. It’s recommended that professionals also
conduct the surveys for the most valid results.
However, if funds are limited, volunteers may
perform this task—but only if they are properly
trained and supervised in the fine points of survey taking.
Resulting data should be summed in a public
report that is also available to the news media.
This provides valuable information not only to
citizens but also to agencies and organizations
that are in a position to improve any negative outcomes and to further support positive outcomes.
And finally, communities should track progress toward meeting their chosen SDG goals.
Again, those goals will be different for every
community, as evidenced by the way the City of
Santa Cruz has instituted its own Health in All
Policies, which addresses issues specific to the
local community.
This means it will be necessary to follow up
with additional surveys at regular intervals. This
may be annually or biennially, based on local
resources. In any event, they should not be scheduled at lengthy intervals because new data are
necessary to track progress and allow processes
to be adjusted, if necessary.
S. Brutschy et al.
6.9
Recommendations
Communities wishing to leverage the UN’s SDGs
to help improve quality of life for their residents
and for the global population are advised to follow a particular course of action. These recommendations may be followed “as is,” or they may
be adapted to specific needs within the
community.
The first step is to establish the conditions
necessary for community involvement. These
conditions are detailed earlier in this paper: commitment to well-being for all; population measures of well-being; and ability to coordinate
action. Details may be adapted to fit the needs of
specific communities, but the process should
remain essentially intact.
The next step is to align your work within the
framework of the SDGs by selecting those that
are most relevant to your situations or that are
most manageable and attainable. For example,
large municipalities may have more resources to
implement a more complete list, while smaller
towns may be limited by lesser funding and fewer
committee participants. The goal is to develop a
plan that fits a community’s particular needs and
resources. Highly visible and decisive results
from these activities will help the community
expand into other SDGs. Conversely, taking on
too many goals at the onset will stall progress and
discourage further participation. Not all SDGs
need be implemented at once.
In Santa Cruz County, the United Way took on
a leadership role for developing the CAP, with
participation from many other local agencies and
organizations—hospitals, educational institutions, social service agencies, private individuals,
nonprofit organizations, and other entities that
saw mutual benefit from this type of cooperation.
As a group, they helped determine the types of
data they would require to achieve the Social
Determinants of Health and, later, the SDGs.
Participating
organizations
pooled
their
resources, according to their abilities, to help
fund the CAP. Because the project budget has
been responsibly managed, the CAP has remained
sustainable throughout the years, becoming the
longest-running project of its type.
Next, conducting statistically valid, professionally administered surveys will provide the
necessary data for a snapshot of current qualityof- life conditions and—with each successive
survey—a comparison with past conditions.
These surveys should generate data that can be
applied to a community’s chosen SDGs, enabling
a clear illustration of current status and a point
from which to formulate improvement goals.
Note that it is important to engage professionals in creating the surveys to ensure that they are
worded in a neutral fashion, so the questions do
not compel the respondent to reply in a particular
way. Professional survey organizations also will
(or should) be involved with an institutional
review board to ensure that respondents can feel
secure in the knowledge that honest responses
will not put them in jeopardy, legally or otherwise. It’s recommended that professionals also
conduct the surveys for the most valid results.
However, if funds are limited, volunteers may
perform this task—but only if they are properly
trained and supervised in the fine points of survey taking.
Resulting data should be summed in a public
report that is also available to the news media.
This provides valuable information not only to
citizens but also to agencies and organizations
that are in a position to improve any negative outcomes and to further support positive outcomes.
And finally, communities should track progress toward meeting their chosen SDG goals.
Again, those goals will be different for every
community, as evidenced by the way the City of
Santa Cruz has instituted its own Health in All
Policies, which addresses issues specific to the
local community.
This means it will be necessary to follow up
with additional surveys at regular intervals. This
may be annually or biennially, based on local
resources. In any event, they should not be scheduled at lengthy intervals because new data are
necessary to track progress and allow processes
to be adjusted, if necessary.
S. Brutschy et al.