Public health agenda setting in Louisiana: an applied index and implications for community development policy

The purpose of this study is to contribute to community development from a public health policy perspective. One tenet of community development is the notion of shared experiences, whether historical, cultural, social, or otherwise. Within the context of this sharing, too, is public health, and the synergy between public health and community development is crucial to the well-being of a given population. Perhaps no place captures the effects of a relatively unhealthy synergy more than Louisiana, a state that has long struggled to increase the well-being of its residents in terms of public health and community development outcomes. Given the state's current public policy environment in which the public health budget continues to experience severe cuts, addressing the health of the population becomes even more difficult in terms of identifying and prioritizing public health needs for governmental action. This study presents an applied public health index (PHI) that equitably and systematically identifies and measures health variables directly related to improving public health outcomes in Louisiana, and in so doing discuss the implications for community development policy.