Enhancing the Human Wellbeing Vital Signs through Inclusive Engagement Report

This report outlines the processes, lessons learned, and results from a collaborative multi-year (2021-2023) project focused on inclusively engaging Puget Sound residents in order to enhance the Human Wellbeing (HWB) Vital Signs (VS). This project included establishing new sustainable community partnerships, co-creating knowledge with community partners, and capturing lessons learned to further this community-based monitoring work for the Puget Sound Partnership and its ecosystem recovery network. A community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach was conducted to co-develop and co-implement this project with the Asia Pacific Cultural Center (APCC) and Empowering People in Communities (EPIC), two Tacoma, WA-based community organizations. This approach included the co-creation of facilitated dialogues (community workshops) (combined n=218) and implementation of an optional Human Wellbeing Vital Signs Survey (2020 version; Appendix E) (combined n=126). While project results can be combined, this project was co-designed through a CBPR approach that was highly community-dependent. As such, the project was intentionally designed to be two separate, yet complementary and simultaneous, projects. This intentional design choice is illustrated in this report, as the report contains two community-specific reports with shared high level sections, including a shared executive summary, background, conclusions and recommendations, and appendices.

While complementary, both projects included distinct communities. One project emphasized Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) residents of Puget Sound and was co-created with Faaluaina (Lua) Pritchard (Executive Director) of APCC. The second project emphasized Black and African American residents of Puget Sound with an emphasis on the Hilltop neighborhood in Tacoma and was co-created with Brendan Nelson, (Executive Director) of EPIC (Mr. Nelson was also affiliated with the Peace Community Center, where 2/3 of the workshops were physically held). The latter project shifted overtime from Black and African American residents to broader Hilltop residents.

Overall, the facilitated dialogues demonstrated that the HWB VS were relevant and resonated among participating community members. This was reflected in the workshop responses, that were abductively coded to the established Vital Signs¹ (Table 1) and coded to highlight emergent community dimensions of health/wellbeing² (Table 2). Variations did emerge among the different participating communities. Cultural Wellbeing, Sense of Place, Outdoor Activity, and Good Governance, among others, were commonly referenced themes among participating Hilltop residents, demonstrating the linkages between nature, cultural or recreational practices (including those associated with family, place-based community, and spiritual/religious-based community), and peoples’ connections, psychological benefits, and life satisfaction, derived from the natural environment (Table 2). Hilltop residents also emphasized Good Governance; however, governance or governing institutions were largely framed negatively or as neglectful, highlighting locally perceived environmental injustice.

Table 1. Human Wellbeing Vital Signs

Table 2. Community Dimensions of Health and Wellbeing 

New Community Dimensions of human health/wellbeing also emerged during the workshops (Table 2). For example, Accessibility, Equity, and Physical Health were salient referenced themes among participating Hilltop residents, while Physical Health, Plants and Trees, and Place and Landscape were common referenced themes among participating AAPI community members. Participating community members also demonstrated climate change impacts on human health/wellbeing and identified places (mostly local) that contributed to their health/wellbeing. The workshop findings demonstrated that while the current iteration of the HWB VS appear to reflect diverse communities’ relationships with and contributions from Puget Sound’s natural environment, the region’s diverse communities also contain a multitude of alternative Community Dimensions of human health/wellbeing. This latter finding warrants more exploration within the Puget Sound Partnership’s monitoring community, including through the potential inclusion of new indicators and also furthers calls for the greater inclusion of more communities within Puget Sound recovery.

Table 3. Human Wellbeing Survey Results Summary

Table 4. Regional & Latinx Human Wellbeing Vital Signs Survey Results

Notes:

1. For more information related to the coded responses linked to the Vital Signs or Community Dimensions of health/wellbeing, see Appendix B.

2. Participating collaborators and communities selected different words when discussing human wellbeing. During the AAPI workshops, health was used to frame the discussions, while during the Hilltop workshops, wellbeing was used to frame the discussions. This was an intentional decision and reflected the CBPR approach, which emphasizes close collaboration and knowledge co-production.

3 The Human Wellbeing Vital Signs include Drinking Water and the biophysical Vital Signs of Freshwater and Marine Water Quality. Given that many community members mentioned “water” in various forms, these three Vital Signs have been merged into one (Water Quality) in this report.

4 Outdoor recreation activities are solely those that took place during the Fall and Spring months.

5 Note that translations of “work” in natural environments may have varied contributing to alternative interpretations of the question.

6 All data stems from the 2018, 2020, Latinx 2021, and 2022 Human Wellbeing Surveys (Fleming and others 2018; Fleming and others 2021; Justiniano 2021; Harrington and others 2023).