Healthy Communities and the Conceptual Framework of Their Indicators

The Healthy Communities Movement and research have developed for several decades in many western countries but it has aroused little attention in present-day China. Based on a review of the existing literature, the article first examines the term of healthy communities, the basic principles of a healthy community, and the relationship among resilience, sustainability and healthy communities, and then it develops a conceptual framework for measuring healthy communities and a conceptual framework for the system of healthy community indicators. Finally, the article analyzes the evaluation problems in terms of indicators and measures for healthy communities.