The Healthy Neighborhoods Project: a local health department's role in catalyzing community development.

Studies show that community development approaches to health education may lead not only to improved social, economic, and health status but also to increased individual participation in health education and preventive health care activities. However, because of categorical funding restraints and philosophical issues, local health departments have rarely given control of defining project outcomes to the community. One such project was in a low-income urban neighborhood in the San Francisco Bay Area.