Healthy Neighborhoods

Healthy Neighborhoods helps residents revitalize their community for better health.

About Us

There is no better place to start making a difference than in your own neighborhood.

Healthy Neighborhoods believes that families:

  • deserve to live in healthy neighborhoods
  • have the assets needed to create positive change

With this vision, our community health workers work with residents to find ways to create positive change in their neighborhood for a healthier tomorrow.

Know Your Neighbors

Strong relationships between neighbors build a neighborhood community. Everyone has a special talent or skill. Sharing that talent or skill can help everyone in the neighborhood. The first step is knowing your neighbors.

Our community health workers have the skills to make connections between neighbors. More connected communities are healthier communities.

People-Powered Change

We want to know what you and your neighbors have to say. We want to know your concerns, dreams and solutions to help make the neighborhood healthy and secure for everyone. We can assist your community in deciding what is most important for making it a safe and healthy place to live. Our community health workers can lend a hand to make things better.

How We Work

Community Health Workers, or promotores, work in a neighborhood and get to know community resident leaders. A resident leadership team forms in each neighborhood and trains with a community health worker so they can work together to do community asset mapping.

Asset mapping is a process where residents identify their neighborhood assets. Assets include:

  • people
  • organizations
  • places such as a park or a community center

The community health worker then works with residents to support them in creating community action plans.

Residents passionate about healthy eating and active living receive program resources to plan and start evidence-based projects at the neighborhood level.

Videos

Metro Health's Healthy Neighborhood program created a series of videos to highlight the work of Community Health Workers (CHWs) in San Antonio communities. These videos highlight community-led projects that promote healthier neighborhoods.

Video: Promotores de Salud Utilizan el Programa ABCD

El programa “Healthy Neighborhoods” de Metro Health creó una serie de videos para promover el trabajo de los promotores de salud en las comunidades de San Antonio. Este video enseña cómo los promotores utilizan un programa de desarrollo comunitario, también conocido como ABCD, para mejorar la salud de las comunidades a las que sirven.

Video: A Million Gardens Project

The program collaborates with local organizations to improve the health of our community. Our team partnered with the San Antonio District of the African Methodist Episcopal Church to establish home vegetable gardens in surrounding communities. This undertaking is part of the National Movement Big Green dot org Million Gardens project, which works with local organizations that already have distribution capacity and offer programming to support health and nutrition to local families.

Video: Resource Center at Villa Coronado

The program partnered with local community members to save a building and create the Resource Center at Villa Coronado–a much-needed space for the community.

Where We Work

Currently Healthy Neighborhoods serves 15 neighborhoods in San Antonio.

These neighborhoods were selected based on:

  • Need: Health and financial challenges
  • Assets: People, organizations and places that can support positive change.

See which neighborhoods are part of the program by viewing the map.

2021 Healthy Neighborhoods Map(PDF, 778KB)