Beyond individual health

Community wellness is often conflated with individual health — but they are distinct concepts. Individual health refers to the physical and mental wellbeing of a person. Community wellness refers to the conditions that determine whether a neighborhood as a whole can function, grow, and sustain itself. These conditions include economic stability, social trust, physical safety, access to services, and the collective capacity to navigate adversity.


The social determinants of health

The CDC describes social determinants of health as the nonmedical factors that influence health outcomes: the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, worship, and age. It groups them into five areas: education access and quality, health care access and quality, neighborhood and built environment, social and community context, and economic stability. The CDC also reports that these factors have been shown to influence health more than either genetics or access to health care services.1 Where you live, what you earn, and the strength of your social ties matter as much as, or more than, what happens in a doctor's office.


Community wellness and economic mobility

Wellness and opportunity are connected. In a 2022 study of about 21 billion friendships across U.S. ZIP codes, Harvard economist Raj Chetty and colleagues found that economic connectedness, meaning the share of higher-income friends among lower-income people, is among the strongest predictors of upward income mobility identified to date. They estimated that if children from low-income families grew up in counties with the economic connectedness of the average child from a higher-income family, their adult incomes would rise about 20 percent on average. Other measures of social capital, such as social cohesion and civic engagement, were not strongly associated with mobility in that study.2 The study shows an association, not proof of cause.

For B2MC, this is a reason to build relationships that cross lines of income and experience, through mentors, employers, and peers, and not only to strengthen a neighborhood from within.


How B2MC approaches community wellness

B2MC's MindBuilders™ program approaches wellness as a community-level issue. Rather than focusing solely on individual mental health treatment, it builds community capacity for wellness — developing shared knowledge, peer support networks, and the collective ability to navigate stress, trauma, and transition together.


Sources

  1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "Why Is Addressing Social Determinants of Health Important?" cdc.gov/about/priorities/why-is-addressing-sdoh-important.html. See also CDC, Social Determinants of Health.
  2. Chetty, R., Jackson, M.O., Kuchler, T., et al. "Social capital I: measurement and associations with economic mobility." Nature 608, 108–121 (2022). doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04996-4. Summary: Opportunity Insights.