Intervention System-Place Level

Critical Elements of a Healthy Place
Click here for a new window with definitions of critical elements that are present in Healthy Places.

Diagram of the Diffusion System
Click here to see a diagram (in a new window) that shows the Diffusion System. The Diffusion System diagram includes the three levels and their corresponding framework components.

Intervention System

The Place Level

Healthy Places© – Picture a place where all children and youth can grow, develop, and live safe, healthy lives. Home, school, and community environments interact with children and youth over time to shape their positive (or negative) development (Barker, 1968; Eccles et al., 1993; Eccles et al., 1996). These environments may include home, day care, and faith community settings, schools, and out-of-school settings.

Change Team members, adults and youth leaders, deliver evidence-based practices (health behavior interventions) to children and youth who participate in activities in Healthy Places. Healthy Places occur in the environments described above. Children and youth need 1) opportunities to participate in healthy developmental places; 2) access to healthy developmental places; 3) quality environments and programs.

Opportunity means families and communities dedicate resources to create these settings. Access means that all children and youth, regardless of social economic status, can obtain transportation and support to have sustained involvement in the setting. Quality means that the setting is a healthy place, i.e., supports positive youth development and obesity prevention.

Background on features of quality healthy places
The Committee on Community-Level Programs for Youth of the National Research Council (NRC) and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) prepared a report that evaluated and integrated the current science of adolescent health and development with the demands of community intervention program design, implementation and evaluation.

In the report, the committee distinguished features of positive developmental settings from personal and social assets that facilitate positive youth development. In the NRC report, the hypothesized features of positive developmental settings included physical and psychological safety, appropriate structure, supportive relationships, opportunities to belong, positive social norms, support for efficacy and mattering, opportunities for skill building, and integration of family, school and communities efforts (NRC-IOM, 2002).

In the NRC report, positive youth development was reflected in the emergence of personal and social assets that include physical development (including good health behaviors), intellectual development, psychological and emotional development, and social development (NRC-IOM, 2002).

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