The social conditions in which we live and work have a profound affect on our health. Access to good jobs, adequate housing, a clean environment, a friendly and safe neighbourhood, fresh food, and good transportation all contribute to our health and well-being. These social determinants of health have an impact that goes well beyond an individual’s own “bad habits.” The St. James Town Initiative undertakes projects and activities that help us to understand how social determinants are affecting the health of residents, then to take actions to improve health in the community.

Connecting People and Ideas through Communication Technologies

The St. James Town (SJT) Initiative employs modern communication technologies to engage and mobilize newcomers in the St. James Town neighbourhood by making information available at the click of residents’ fingertips. As the Initiative moves forward, collecting new information on neighbourhood and health using community based, participatory research methodologies, it has also built tools for information sharing and dissemination. A community friendly website has been developed which brings together social media technologies such as YouTube videos, Flickr photo galleries, and blogging capabilities to highlight neighbourhood characteristics and their effects on health as perceived by new immigrants who live in this high density, inner-city neighbourhood. The website helps to initiate discussion and create wider awareness of the issues in the St. James Town neighbourhood.  It also brings to focus the importance of social determinants of health at the neighbourhood level such as waste management, availability of green space, common meeting spaces, etc.

A recent addition to the website is an interactive Google service map. This tool was created to highlight the organizations and services available in St. James Town. With over 18,000 people (64% are newcomers to Canada) living in this low-income neighbourhood, there is a high demand on local resources. Though, the area of the neighbourhood is relatively small at 0.23km2, a number of organizations are located in the basements and sub-basements (two floors below the main lobby) of the apartment buildings. This makes it challenging for residents and particularly newcomers moving into the neighbourhood to know what services exist and where they are located as there are few signs and no identification of these organizations at street level. The interactive service directory provides information about the kinds of services (such as parenting and early childhood organizations, health services, grocery stores and recreational amenities) as well as where they are located with contact information. Many of these services serve newcomers and it is important that there are easy to use tools such as this map to direct people to the resources they need.

The service directory were created during the summer of 2008 by three student interns from the St. James Town neighbourhood who completed a neighbourhood scan to identify the existing services and amenities as well as take pictures  of these resources for easy identification and then compiled this information into a downloadable pamphlet. The information was then transformed into an interactive Google map by a computer programmer from SJT. Since the introduction of this tool, the number of people visiting the website climbed from 23,791 in June 2008 to 39,324 in November. This easy to use resource provides valuable information to individuals who are new to Canada and establishing themselves in SJT as well as residents who have lived in St. James Town for years. It has also served as a valuable resource to service providers and community organizations and would be a helpful planning tool as it identifies the assets and gaps in service provision in SJT.

Concept Mapping: Advancing the Photo Voice Projects to a New Level

The Concept Mapping Project began in June and builds on the work of the Photo Voice Project. Concept mapping is a collaborative research and reporting method that helps community members organize and prioritize group information. Using photos from the Photo Voice Project, the SJT Initiative is pioneering the use of the concept mapping software with visual information combined with written statements. Two groups of SJT residents came together in separate workshops to categorize the photos and statements, they then worked independently to group the 77 photos into themes and rank them according to the perceived influence on health and wellbeing as well as the potential for the issue represented in the photo and statement to be addressed through action. One group had participated in the Photo Voice Project and one group was new to the Initiative. The two groups then came together to examine the representation of the groupings in a concept map and worked towards a consensus to ensure the themes highlighted their perceptions. This project has produced semi-quantitative information from the ideas in the photos in the form of cluster maps and graphs that can be used to more easily present the voices of SJT residents captured by the Photo Voice and Community Mapping projects to program managers, planners and decision-makers.

Visual Voices: Neighbourhood and Health

Visual Voices: Neighbourhood and Health is a Photovoice project by St. James Town residents, for St. James Town residents. Twenty-eight participants used photography to express their experiences of place and health in St. James Town. They took over 200 photos and wrote 77 stories that speak about a broad range of factors from the positive impacts of community diversity, to the negative effects of garbage and lack of ownership on community pride.

Mapping St. James Town: Health and Place

The St. James Town Initiative’s Community Mapping project set out to document lived experiences of residents in the neighbourhood in terms of social determinants of their health and the health of their families. Through mapping and interviews, 18 residents created an inventory of the community resources that are available to support their health and well-being, and have identified common needs. Hand-drawn maps were used to honour the residents’ knowledge of their neighbourhood, and became the basis for conversations that record both individual and shared experiences of health and place.