Within is evidence and practice-based strategies, resources and case study examples showing how park and recreation professionals have advanced parks and recreation as Community Wellness Hubs. It showcases a process guide to creating a Community Wellness Hub in alignment with seven dimensions of well-being. This is an evaluation of 15 local park and recreation agencies that planned, developed and created wellness hubs between 2020 and 2022.
What is wellness?
Throughout time and across cultures, the term “wellness” has been defined and applied in many ways. The National Wellness Institute encapsulates these interpretations by acknowledging that:
- Wellness is a conscious, self-directed, and evolving process of achieving one’s full potential.
- Wellness encompasses lifestyle, mental and spiritual well-being, and the environment.
- Wellness is positive, affirming, and contributes to living a long and healthy life.
- Wellness is multicultural and holistic, involving multiple dimensions.
“Wellness is functioning optimally within your current environment.”
Mindfully focusing on wellness in our lives builds resilience and enables us to thrive amidst life’s challenges. NWI promotes Six Dimensions of Wellness: Emotional, Physical, Intellectual, Occupational, Spiritual, and Social. Addressing all six dimensions of wellness helps individuals understand what it means to be holistically W.E.L.L. by focusing on their Whole Person, Environment, Lifestyle, and Learning.
Developed by Dr. Bill Hettler, co-founder of the National Wellness Institute (NWI), this interdependent model for the Six Dimensions of Wellness provides the categories from which NWI derives its resources and services.
Every day, in communities across the country, park and recreation professionals are making their communities better places to live, learn, work and play through their role as stewards of Community Wellness Hubs . To help park and recreation professionals maximize this role, the National Recreation and Park Association (NRPA) is releasing Community Wellness Hubs – A Toolkit for Advancing Community Health and Well-Being Through Parks and Recreation.
This toolkit contains evidence and practice-based strategies, resources and case study examples to give park and recreation professionals ideas and guidance to advance parks and recreation as Community Wellness Hubs. It provides a process guide to creating a Community Wellness Hub in alignment with seven dimensions of well-being. The toolkit is based on an evaluation of 15 local park and recreation agencies that planned, developed and created wellness hubs between 2020 and 2022.
The resource comprises five primary sections with additional resources embedded throughout:
What Is a Community Wellness Hub?
Parks and recreation are vital to community health and well-being. Access to these spaces, programs and services remains essential to community vitality and is a key factor in advancing health equity, improving individual and community-level health outcomes, and enhancing quality of life. Park and recreation professionals, in partnership with community members, are uniquely suited to serve as stewards of Community Wellness Hubs. Community Wellness Hubs are trusted gathering places that connect every member of the community to essential programs, services and spaces that advance health equity, improve health outcomes and enhance quality of life. Community Wellness Hubs are essential to health and well-being — they remove barriers and bridge gaps to help people access vital health and social resources, ensuring that all people can thrive.
How Do Community Wellness Hubs Advance Health and Well-Being?
Community Wellness Hubs build on the existing strengths, assets and foundations of local park and recreation agencies, working to address the root causes of health and social inequities and promoting health across multiple levels of intervention. They serve as essential infrastructure and provide essential services that center people and their individual lived experiences and unique needs. They leverage partnerships and the resources, skills and knowledge of other sectors to integrate programs and services that advance equity, resilience, and health and well-being.
Park and recreation professionals can transform a specific physical space (community or recreation center, park, etc.) into a Community Wellness Hub by providing an equitable and inclusive set of programs and services in one central location. They also can function as stewards of Community Wellness Hubs at a larger, system-wide level, shifting their agency mission, operations and practices to function in a more holistic, intentional and interconnected way and delivering services out in the community. This holistic lens is a critical piece of the puzzle.
To address today’s public health challenges — chronic disease, mental health conditions, substance use disorders, social isolation, food insecurity, gun violence and more — park and recreation professionals must focus solutions on addressing the root causes of health and social inequities (the problem) to truly advance well-being.
While Community Wellness Hubs will look different in every neighborhood, city and county, they are united by their shared goals of advancing health equity, improving health outcomes and enhancing quality of life for all people.
Health Equity at the Center
Health equity must be at the center of Community Wellness Hubs — when health equity is achieved, all people can thrive. Hubs must focus on addressing the root causes of health inequities. That requires challenging and dismantling the unfair systems, which include mindsets, power structures, policies, social norms, relationships, environments (physical and social), and resources, that have created barriers to health primarily for Black, Indigenous, people of color, low-income communities, and other historically disenfranchised communities. To address the root causes of health and social inequities and ensure all people can benefit from parks and recreation, professionals must focus on enacting systems change approaches. Systems change approaches shift the conditions of the system to change mindsets, power structures, policies, social norms, relationships, environments (physical and social), and resources.
How to Approach Creating a Community Wellness Hub
When creating a Community Wellness Hub, there are four primary phases to work through. In addition to each phase, there are key considerations that should be present throughout the development process. Before you begin working through the components, here are some key questions you’ll want to consider
- Are there existing organizations, coalitions or partners that are already supporting community health efforts? If so, do you have a connection or relationship with them? Should you become an active participant and contributor to existing efforts? Are there any gaps in these relationships, especially pertaining to those most impacted by health inequities in the community?
- Are there clear, unmet needs that have been identified by the community? What have you heard from the community in terms of issues and challenges that affect health and well-being? What information, data sources, assessments, voices and perspectives are informing this?
- Who is leading conversations about the needs and priorities of underrepresented and historically disenfranchised groups in the community? What is your relationship with those leading the conversations? How can you build trust with those groups and genuinely partner with them or support their efforts authentically?
Answering these questions up front will help determine next steps and strategies related to creating a hub, and what your agency’s role should be in advancing solutions to health and social inequities within your community.
Section 2a: Four Primary Development Phases
The development of a Community Wellness Hub should be built in phases, with each phase building on the previous one. An overview is provided for each of the core phases below. NRPA plans to provide additional training and resources on the steps outlined in this process in the future. It is essential to engage community members, especially historically disenfranchised and underrepresented populations, during each phase. Park and recreation staff of all levels as well as cross-sector, cross-disciplinary and community-based partners and decision-makers also should be involved in each phase. Remember, an “upstream” approach requires surrounding the problem (the root cause) with all the stakeholders who are impacted by it and have a role to play in creating a solution.
Phase 1: Develop Partnerships and Collect Information
Start by building, strengthening and/or joining an existing partnership or a coalition to support the hub in the short and long term. Engaging with community members, partners and organizations to understand current needs, assets and resources, and gathering information and data from a variety of diverse sources are a key part of this phase. Community health needs assessments and community asset mapping are activities to conduct during this phase to collect information about the needs and opportunities that exist across the community from diverse voices. Identify like-minded organizations with resources and assets that can support the hub’s vision and goals.
Engage Core Stakeholder Group
Once you’ve started convening partners around the hub’s development and analyzing data from the needs assessment and asset mapping, begin to determine key strategies and activities of your hub. It’s critical to ensure that you’re gathering information from all potential stakeholders and beneficiaries. To develop overall vision, goals and an action plan, you’ll want to create a core stakeholder or advisory group.
Stakeholder engagement will require dedicated time and energy spent on building trust and strengthening relationships. Engaging stakeholders is a necessary element of program design because their perspectives drive components of the program’s design, operations and outcomes. Examples of stakeholders include community members, agency staff of all levels, partners — such as health departments, local government, universities, nonprofits and community-based organizations, and many others. It is critical to ensure that stakeholders include a diverse set of perspectives and experiences, including historically disenfranchised populations and those most impacted by health inequities. Stakeholders should be engaged early in the process to increase acceptance and participation in the program and to provide valuable feedback in the planning process.
This phase also requires broader community engagement regarding how the hub can meet the community’s needs, as well as continued identification of assets and resources that potentially could align with the hub’s key strategies.
If we don’t listen to our community, we are going to miss the mark. It should be a two-way relationship between the community and the hub.” – Paula McDevitt, Director, Bloomington (Indiana) Parks and Recreation
Identify Vision and Objectives
During the next phase, the core stakeholder group will help guide collective decisions as you identify your hub’s vision, mission, overarching goals, and specific short-, medium- and long-term objectives. In this phase, you’ll work through the following:
- Define the vision and mission of your hub
- Define the need. What is the reason behind your hub and what will it address?
- Identify overarching hub goals (ideally, three to five goals)
- What do you expect the effects of the hub to be? What will its impact be on the community?
- Break down overarching goals into short-, medium- and long-term objectives
- What will you work to accomplish in the short, medium and long term to achieve your overarching goals?
- Use the common acronym SMART to describe your objectives. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) describes SMART objective characteristics as:
- Specific: Concrete, detailed and well-defined, so that you know where you are going and what to expect when you arrive.
- Measurable: Numbers and quantities provide means of measurement and comparison.
- Achievable: Feasible and easy to put into action.
- Realistic: Considers constraints such as resources, personnel, cost and time frame.
- Time-Bound: A time frame helps to set boundaries around the objective.
- Sample SMART objective: Our Community Wellness Hub will increase access to healthy food and nutrition education, with a focus on reaching food insecure community members. By September 30, 2022, [Park and Recreation Agency] will establish a formal partnership with a Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) enrollment services provider to offer enrollment support at [park and recreation site location] twice a week. We also will offer a healthy cooking program for families, reaching 25 families within six months of offering the program.
- Identify resources
- What resources are needed to reach these objectives?
Define Key Strategies and Develop an Action, Implementation, and Evaluation Plan
This is the action-oriented phase where you begin implementing the hub’s plans around key strategies and activities to achieve your short-, medium- and long-term objectives. You will want to work with your core stakeholder or advisory group, as well as your broader group of partners to gather input on the best strategies or solutions for the development of an action and implementation plan. You will want to review the Dimensions of Well-Being and Hub Strategies sections in this resource and ensure equity is centered as you develop the action plan. It is important to outline how your hub’s overall goals and short-, medium- and long-term objectives align with your action plan.
Create an action plan that includes the following:
- List the objective.
- Name each of the key activities required to meet the objective.
- Identify the person responsible for leading each step.
- Indicate the timeline for beginning and completing each step.
- Identify the resources required for each step.
- Name any expected challenges you may need to navigate.
- Define the target outcome.
- Identify how and when you will measure and report on progress toward the target outcome.
Once your action plan is written, make sure to disseminate it widely in your community to partners and stakeholders.
Our goal has and continues to be poised to be used as a resource and a holistic safety net for our community.” – Erica Benoit, Community Engagement Coordinator, City of Bristol (Connecticut) Parks, Recreation, Youth and Community Services
To ensure community voices are represented in the design, planning and implementation of the hub, be mindful of representation and address power dynamics. Inviting community members to be a part of the conversation will require intentionality and planning. For example, if community members are providing feedback or advising the hub, budget for funding to provide stipends or gift cards for their time. When building an inclusive coalition, consider recruiting a small group versus just one person. Think of whom you are not currently engaged with, then invite those community members to join the conversation. Avoid tokenism (an inauthentic effort to engage underrepresented groups for the appearance of diversity) and focus on building strong, trusting relationships with the community.
Community Wellness Hubs rely on continuous participation from partners. In this model, parks and recreation largely serves as a convener of health partners with the goal of connecting community members to a diverse set of health and wellness offerings. Community Wellness Hubs do not need to be the direct provider of all health and wellness services. Given the many directions a hub can take, considering the different types of partners and organizations that will be necessary or the key for achieving overall goals is important.
Cross sector partnership building and coalition building can be challenging, yet very rewarding. Thinking about the different assets your community or partner organizations have also is important. Identifying new partners, reaching out and beginning to build a relationship all take time, especially where there may be distrust. Make sure that time and money are both budgeted for in the beginning and throughout. It also is vital to ensure partnerships are equitable, meaning that work is shared with everyone involved and partners are compensated and acknowledged for their role. “This will move at the speed of trust” is a good reminder to spend energy and capacity on connections and relationships. “Think outside the box” when it comes to uncovering new partners and organizations that could be essential for the hub.
Opportunities for Parks and Recreation to Advance Economic Well-Being
Park and recreation agencies are essential to supporting and promoting economic health and well-being. In addition to the community-wide economic benefits generated by parks and recreation, the profession also promotes access to direct economic opportunity and financial security for individuals and families. Youth programs foster economic opportunity by supporting academic attainment, reducing absenteeism and encouraging youth to make positive and healthy choices. Park and recreation agencies are one of the largest providers of summer youth employment, and they provide workforce development opportunities and vocational training to young and future professionals, preparing them for 21st century jobs. They also connect community members to needed social resources, including housing, other workforce opportunities, healthcare, meals and supplemental benefit programs.
Opportunities for Parks and Recreation to Advance Emotional Well-Being
Park and recreation agencies support and promote emotional health and well-being. Park and recreation professionals support community members who are experiencing or impacted by rising rates of mental health conditions, substance use disorder, homelessness or other adversities. Agencies are establishing new practices, programs and services to better support and protect emotional health and connect people to needed mental and behavioral health services. Efforts include training staff on trauma-informed principles [ 39 ], adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) [ 40 ] and mental health first aid; strengthening partnerships with schools and mental health providers to connect youth to positive experiences in the community; partnering with care networks and coalitions to support people experiencing homelessness, substance use disorders or mental illness; and addressing the pervasive stigma around mental health conditions and substance use disorders.