Urban HEART Detroit: the Application of a Health Equity Assessment Tool

The Urban Health Assessment Response Tool (Urban HEART) was developed by the World Health Organization. In 2016, the Urban HEART was adapted and used by the Healthy Environments Partnership, a long-standing community-based participatory research partnership focused on addressing social determinants of health in Detroit, Michigan, to identify health equity gaps in the city. This paper uses the tool to: (1) examine the geographic distributions of key determinants of health in Detroit, across the five Urban HEART specified domains: physical environment and infrastructure, social and human development, economics, governance, and population health, and (2) determine whether these indicators are associated with the population health indicators at the neighborhood level. In addition to the Urban HEART matrix, we developed various tools including graphs and maps to further examine Detroit’s health equity gaps. Although not required by Urban HEART, we statistically analyzed the associations between each indicator with the health outcomes. Our results showed that all the domains contained one or more indicators associated with one or more health outcomes, making this an effective tool to study health equity in Detroit. The Urban HEART Detroit project comes at a critical time where the nation is focusing on health equity and understanding underlying determinants of health inequities in urban areas. A tool like Urban HEART can help identify these areas for rapid intervention to prevent unnecessary burden from disease. We recommend the application of the Urban HEART, in active dialog with community groups, organizations, and leaders, to promote health equity.