Developing Ecosystem Health Indicators in Centro Habana: A Community‐based Approach

Abstract

A set of interventions was undertaken between 1995 and 1999 to improve the quality of life and human health in Cayo Hueso, an inner city community in Central Havana. The municipality and community organizations contacted the agency responsible for public and environmental health in Cuba (INHEM) to evaluate whether these improvements were as effective and efficient as possible, so as to assist in planning further interventions in this and other communities. With the aid of international researchers, an effort was made to strengthen the community's capacity to apply an ecosystem health approach, adapting the analytical framework (DPSEEA: driving force–pressure–state–exposure–effects–action) developed for this purpose by the World Health Organization. A series of workshops and focus groups with community representatives and researchers was conducted in late 1999 and early 2000 to develop appropriate indicators for the analysis. Interventions were grouped into those relating to improved housing, the physical community infrastructure (e.g., water, sewage, street lights), and the socio‐cultural environment (e.g., programs for youths and seniors). The DPSEEA framework was embraced by the community and used to define indicators at the individual, household, and neighborhood levels; the community‐researcher team then collectively elaborated the methodology to obtain the needed information. Data collection is now underway with the process having triggered a series of new partnerships, including other communities (comparison groups) now eager to learn from the Cayo Hueso interventions. With the capacity to apply this approach strengthened, the community is preparing to use the results of the analyses to set new priorities and pursue longer‐term ecosystem health interventions.

Moving beyond the human–nature dichotomy through biocultural approaches: including ecological well-being in resilience indicators

“…The ecosystem health literature (e.g., Schaeffer et al 1988, Costanza et al 1992 proposes measurement in terms of vigor, organization, and resilience (Costanza 2012), and is generally associated with a utilitarian value and western understandings of ecosystems. The term ecosystem health can be used without reference to feedbacks with people, though some authors do recognize these links (Tiwari et al 1998, Spiegel et al 2001, Tzoulas et al 2007). We believe that using the same term "wellbeing" for humans as well as nonhumans helps reinforce interactions and processes between humans and nature.…”

Building Capacity in Central Havana to Sustainably Manage Environmental Health Risk in an Urban Ecosystem

“…The integrating DPSEEA framework (driving forcepressure-state-exposure-effect/action) (Briggs, 1999), elaborated by the World Health Organization (Corvalan et al, 1996), was presented in workshops and was rapidly embraced to define indicators at the individual, household, and neighborhood level (Spiegel et al, 2001a) For example, as shown in Table 1, it was noted that weak economic growth constituted a key driving force influencing the need of intervention, through a creative blend of targeting scarce resources and mobilizing community capacities. At the level of pressures, for example, the cost of repairs and proportion of families willing to undertake these were considered indicators relevant for the housing intervention; the proportion of people unemployed was listed as a relevant indicator of pressure in the sociocultural domain, along with the funds allocated for such initiatives.…”

“…This mass mobilization of local and national resources allowed the following interventions to be carried out (Spiegel et al, 2001a):…”

“…The ecosystem approach to human health was explicitly adopted to provide an integrating framework to guide our multidisciplinary team of researchers, community, and decision-makers in analyzing the multicomponents Plan Cayo Hueso intervention (Yassi et al, 1999;Bonet et al, 2001;Spiegel et al, 2001a). This involved formally evaluating the effectiveness of the interventions Spiegel, 2002, as well as analyzing community participation processes within the intervention and its evaluation )-each of which will be summarized briefly below.…”

Relative Urban Ecosystem Health Assessment: A Method Integrating Comprehensive Evaluation and Detailed Analysis

“…As stated in the review of urban ecosystem health assessment (Su et al, 2010), different frameworks, including performance of healthy cities (Takano and Nakamura, 1998), subsystem model (Guo et al, 2002), driving force-pressure-state-exposure-effectaction model (Spiegel et al, 2001), have been used to establish health indicators of the urban ecosystem from aspects of social, economic, ecological, and human health. The attempt to measure changes in human and societal health and well-being along with those related to the integrity of natural ecosystems (McMullan, 1997) are regarded as the common characteristics amongst these different models and indicators of urban ecosystem health.…”