Public Policy for Health of the Community: The Importance of Community Centers Laws of the city, state and nation all directly have an impact on the health and wellness of their citizens. Hence, it is crucial to foster policies at all arenas of government to adequately acknowledge the facts that can have a negative impact on the health of a community. This is why public policy and nursing are so important: nurses are consistently on the front lines of patient care and have an intimate knowledge often of the needs and vulnerabilities of a particular community. Public policy is crucial as it can impact some of the biggest sectors of human and community life—from housing, job availability, access to healthy food and the availability of high quality medical support, to the overall cleanliness of the environment lived in. For example, even public policy that appears to have no impact on health can have a strong influence on the health and safety of residents, such as a zoning ordinance that decides which businesses can be located near residential areas (jhsph.edu). Access or lack of access to mass transit can have an enormous impact on the health and safety of residents in local communities. Hence, this paper will focus on an arena of public policy that has a direct impact on community health, which is the needed presence of a city-mandated community centers throughout the region.

This change in public policy that needs to occur can follow the example of the 27 community centers that were instated in Seattle in...

The mindset behind the community centers is that they are safe places where people can meet, share fun times, be creative, and offer their children a secure and stimulating place to go after school. While some view the community center as simply a nice luxury on the local level, the connection to mental and physical health is acute: community centers provide children with a place to vent emotions, to be creative, to build skills that will help them stand up to peer pressure. In at-risk communities, such centers can give young people a sense of family and a sense that there’s a place where they can go outside their homes (which are sometimes dysfunctional). In this manner, a community center can be instrumental in thwarting young people from joining gangs or getting pregnant in their teen years.
The exact wording of the bill will be influenced by another state (Texas), which has had success in implementing public policy in support of community centers. The wording would be as follows: Community Centers support essential networks of private and public providers that provide options for individuals using services and tools while meeting their health and safety requirements within our local communities (txcouncil.com). Local government sectors, grassroots community leaders and branches of the business sector work together to mesh and share resources to develop a lasting investment in strong communities (txcouncil.com). The city-wide community centers will be run by local control: “Local officials and…