Healthy Housing

Poor housing conditions in Trenton has led to negative health effects, low educational outcomes, and high social and economic costs for community members, families, and especially children.

It’s the reason THT partnered with Isles, Inc., a local community organization to provide “healthy home” assessment and remediations, on an innovative data analysis project to identify where poor housing conditions exist in the city.

THT spent time on this project, collecting and sharing our findings to identify, map, and correlate lead and healthy homes issues with the health conditions experienced by families to spur policy change. Read our blog “Better Housing, Better Health.”

THT, which operates the Trenton Health Information Exchange containing clinical records for more than 600,000 patients, was able to identify clusters of health problems such as asthma and high blood lead levels with other publicly available data about housing conditions across the city.

Working with Isles and Princeton University, THT developed a database of deed-restricted affordable housing in Trenton, identifying when those affordability requirements expire. We developed recommendations regarding how and under what circumstances to preserve these affordable homes, and where new affordable homes should be built, keeping in mind the need for access to resources for healthy lifestyles.

THT also convened community partners to consider developing a universal lead treatment protocol, updating education materials, and standardizing how lead screening data is added to the HIE.

Our shared goal is a more effective, more efficient process to direct community resources to address underlying causes of health problems, creating a healthy living environment for all Trenton children and families.

This work was supported by New Jersey Health Initiatives through the Upstream Action Acceleration program. NJHI is a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation that is dedicated to supporting innovations and driving conversations to build healthier New Jersey communities. Other support is provided by the Kresge Foundation and the New Jersey Alliance for Clinical and Translational Science NJ-ACTS program.