Our Model for Community Change and Improvement: Working Together for Healthier Communities: A Framework for Collaboration Among Community Partnerships, Support Organizations, and Funders
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A FOCUS ON COMMUNITY (AND SYSTEMS) CHANGE
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WHAT MAKES IT WORK: SEVEN KEY FACTORS IN COMMUNITY CHANGE
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WHO IS INVOLVED?
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A PROPOSED"MEMORANDUM OF COLLABORATION"
To improve our communities -- to make them places where people are healthy, safe, and cared for -- takes a lot of work. As community organizers, we know all too well that we can't do it alone. The ability to partner effectively with other individuals and organizations -- both inside and outside the community -- is absolutely essential to doing what we like to call "the work" of building healthy communities.
However, these partnerships don't materialize out of thin air. And once they do occur, the players involved aren't always sure of their roles, or how those roles can come together in a manner meets everyone's needs and interests. In short, there's often a knowledge gap, even when everyone wants to work together for the same outcomes.
In this section, we'll try to address that gap. We outline a modest proposal for how three key groups -- community partnerships, support and intermediary organizations, and grantmakers -- might work together to make the most of everyone's investments in the work.
We'll start with a brief look at why we focus on community (and systems) change and what we believe are seven key elements in effective community work. This understanding, although laid out elsewhere in the Community Tool Box, forms the basis for later ideas in this section. Then, we will explain who the key players in community work are, and follow up with an understanding of how they can best work together to make the most of everyone's efforts.
Our hope is that, when adapted in local dialogue, this model "memorandum of collaboration" will help guide future community investments.
A FOCUS ON COMMUNITY (AND SYSTEMS) CHANGE
When we talk about building healthier communities, we mean the process of people working together to address what matters to them -- whether that is reducing violence, revitalizing an urban neighborhood, or promoting child health. Civic engagement is promoted among all of the members of the community. By community, we mean people who share a common place, such as a rural community or urban neighborhood, or experience, including being an adolescent or a member of an ethnic minority group.
To address what matters to community members, we need to change the conditions in which we live, with the hope that changing those conditions will change people's behavior and more distant outcomes. For example, a community organization might make it more difficult for teens to buy cigarettes, with the hope that those changes will result in fewer teens smoking, and fewer related deaths.
We believe that collaborative partnerships should focus on environmental changes -- bringing about those community and systems changes that modify local conditions. That's because we believe these changes are an intermediate outcome in the long process of community health improvement. Community and systems changes fall in to one of three categories, all of which should relate back to community-determined goals:
- New or modified programs -- for example, after-school programs or prevention services
- New or modified policies -- for example, higher fines for selling illegal products to minors or family-friendly policies in businesses
- New or modified practices -- for example, improved access to health services or increased opportunities for academic responding in schools
WHAT MAKES IT WORK: SEVEN KEY FACTORS IN COMMUNITY CHANGE
Our research and experience -- and that of many others -- suggests that there are seven essential ingredients that contribute to community change.
- Clear vision and mission -- those initiatives with a clear and specific focus, such as increasing rates of childhood immunization or lowering the rate of unemployment, bring about much higher rates of change than broad "healthy communities" efforts which lack a targeted mission and objectives. The vision and mission may reflect a continuum of outcomes, including:
- Categorical issues (e.g., adolescent pregnancy),
- Broader interrelated concerns (e.g., youth development), and/or
- More fundamental social determinants of health and development (e.g., children living in poverty).
- Action planning -- Identifying specific community changes (that is, new or modified programs, policies, and practices) to be sought may be the single, most important practice that can be implemented. The action plan should be quite precise, specifying with whom, by whom, how and by when each action step should be carried out.
- Leadership -- A change in leadership can dramatically affect the rate of change brought about by a community group. The loss of strong leadership can be particularly difficult for an organization.
- Resources for community mobilizers -- Hiring community mobilizers or organizers can aid in following up on action plans. It can be very difficult to maintain an organization without some paid staff. Paid organizers can help fan the flames and keep the level of excitement about the organization and its goals at a consistently high level.
- Documentation and feedback on the changes brought about by the organization -- It's also very important that people keep a record of what they have done and how they have done it. Having this history can be an invaluable guide for the organization's work. Looking regularly (at least quarterly) at what the group has done, how quickly it has occurred, and outside events that affect the group's work has been shown to spur groups onto even greater heights.
- Technical assistance -- Outside help with specific actions, such as action planning or securing resources, is also a way to support a group's efforts to transform its community.
- Making outcome matter -- Finally, grantmakers also have the ability to increase rates of community and systems change through offering incentives or disincentives to their grantees. For example, the annual renewal of multi-year awards or the offering of bonus grants could be based on evidence of progress or accomplishment by the community group.
WHO IS INVOLVED?
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