New Orleans, LA

Louisiana Public Health Institute
University Medical Center
New Orleans Health Department
Foundation for Louisiana
Ride New Orleans
Transdev, in service to New Orleans Regional Transit Authority
Ujamaa Economic Development Corporation

ABOUT

High quality, affordable transportation is a vital linkage to opportunities, including the opportunity to be healthy. BUILD Health Mobility aspires to equitably improve health and well-being by addressing transportation and mobility barriers in New Orleans’ Claiborne Corridor. This collaborative aspires to influence policy and organizational practices, inform future transportation investments, and develop strategies to prioritize equity in health and transportation planning. transportation.

Targeted Impact

This project focuses on concrete policy and systems change opportunities to improve health and mobility in the Claiborne Corridor, including: incorporating health considerations and metrics into mobility plans and policies; integrating social needs, such as transportation, into health care operations; identifying opportunities for hospital engagement with and investment in the community; and advancing equity measures, such as displacement mitigation, in local policy development and planning.

BUILD PRINCIPLES

BUILD and its communities apply bold, upstream, integrated, local, and data-driven (BUILD) approaches to improve health in communities that are adversely affected by upstream factors.

Bold

This project aspires to achieve concrete policy and systems changes. Some transportation and mobility plans for our region have not explicitly included health as a consideration and often do not use health as a metric of success for implementation. This collaboration offers another unique opportunity to influence the New Orleans policy landscape and built environment. Furthermore, as the successor to the legacy of Charity hospital, University Medical Center (UMC) looks to BUILD as an opportunity for UMC to go beyond its current role as health care provider and enhance its role as a contributing partner in community health improvement.

Upstream

In the Claiborne Corridor, public transit, walking, and biking are vital linkages to employment, education, grocery stores, health care, parks and recreation, and other community resources that influence health. The partnership brings previously unaligned partners together to work on policy and systems changes to create long-term impact on mobility and health for all live, work, learn, and play in the Claiborne Corridor.

Integrated

The partnership is unified under a shared vision of health and equity, where all residents have equal access to opportunities, including the opportunity to be healthy. Guided by a cross-sector partnership and engagement of diverse community leaders, this project brings complementary perspectives and assets into community and policy planning to advance mobility and equity for Claiborne residents.

Local

The Claiborne Corridor was intentionally identified as the geographic focus for this initiative based on the identification of place-based inequities. The presence of the I-10 overpass in the Claiborne Corridor creates a barrier to both health and mobility. Built in 1969 over a thriving black business district, construction of the overpass physically and culturally disrupted a vital corridor of major significance to the black community. Additionally, by focusing on mobility as an upstream lever for improving health, this project strives to create more equitable outcomes by deepening our understanding and then addressing unfair policies, systems and structures that limit the opportunity for residents to be healthy.

Data-Driven

Data is both a driver and an intended outcome of this project. Using community and hospital data sources, the project will reexamine neighborhood-level conditions and priorities in the Corridor in order to explore community-driven, targeted improvements in mobility and connectivity. Based on priority policy and systems change opportunities, the partnership will leverage unique hospital data to explore targeted questions and considerations around health and transportation. Additionally, the data infrastructure assets to be leveraged and aligned for this project can be applied to other change agendas outside of mobility, which will be an important consideration for the partnership as we establish a collaborative approach towards sustainability.