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Healthy Communities Program Overview
According to the American Association for World Health, people can create a healthier community only if they understand that they themselves have the power to affect not only their own health, but that of their entire community. Health is not just a medical problem for doctors and hospitals to handle. It is an amalgamation of healthy behaviors and the diverse structures supporting these behaviors. By working together, communities can alter the structures that can create or impede health.
Healthy Communities: A Universal Concept
Health is more than merely the absence of disease. It encompasses the well-being of the whole community. AIHA's Healthy Communities Program moves partners outside hospital walls and immerses them in the real-life health problems facing communities today. Whether the issue is substance abuse, environmental hazards, or chronic conditions resulting from unhealthy lifestyle choices, the Healthy Communities concept brings together all members of a community—from teachers and clergy to government and law enforcement officials and factory workers—to assess problems and achieve consensus on viable, sustainable solutions. Through the Healthy Communities process, people learn to take charge of their own health, as well as the health of their community. Individuals are empowered and given concrete tools and strategies for effecting positive, community-wide change.
AIHA Healthy Communities Partnerships: An Historical Perspective
Following the collapse of the former Soviet Union, nations in Central and Eastern Europe and Eurasia faced many challenges as they worked to build nascent democracies. Health reform posed a particular problem because the old system focused on hospital-based treatment rather than more cost-effective primary care and prevention services. In addition, the provision of health services was largely prescriptive—most people did not play an active role in their own care. As the reform process progressed, national governments began to realize that the task of maintaining good health cannot rely solely on a few decision-makers. Health is a collective responsibility of all segments of the community. More and more, municipalities and individuals were expected to assume greater responsibility for the health of their community and the people who lived there.
AIHA's first Healthy Communities partnerships were established in Slovakia in October 1995. These partnerships—and those that followed in other countries throughout the region—are part of a worldwide effort to create healthier communities and to redefine what health means by focusing not only on medical issues, but on quality of life factors as well.
Mobilizing for Change
AIHA’s Healthy Communities Program applies AIHA’s successful partnership model to the Healthy Communities methodology, yielding a broad-based, community-to-community initiative that is a unique vehicle for developing skills in community health assessment, planning, and improvement. AIHA’s Healthy Communities methodology engages community leaders from overseas and their US counterparts in a systematic six-phase process that combines workshops and professional exchanges conducted over an 18-month period. Host partners are exposed to strategies that have been proven effective in mobilizing communities to focus on health-related issues. They work together with their US partners to conduct needs assessment surveys, thereby gaining valuable research and epidemiology skills. They collaborate to enlist the support of key community stakeholders, which hones their organizational development skills. And, they join forces to create and nurture a well-trained cadre of community leaders who are empowered to develop solutions to problems that are identified.
Assessing Community Health Needs
An essential element of the six-phase Healthy Communities process is a community health assessment. The assessment is critical not only for planning and optimizing the use of community resources, but also for generating a genuine sense of collective ownership, individual responsibility, and shared accountability for creating a healthier community.
A community health assessment provides an opportunity to establish baseline measures of the health status, health practices, and health-related perceptions of a given population. Drawing on both quantitative and qualitative data about health status and use of health services, the assessment examines factors such as:
- the political, social, and economic determinants that can have an impact on health;
- lifestyle choices like smoking, exercise, and dietary habits;
- environmental hazards including exposure to carcinogenic agents in the air, water and workplace; and
- relevant hereditary and physiological indicators.
US Partners Serve as Role Models
US partner institutions are selected because they have demonstrated an ability to enhance the delivery of community-based healthcare services to indigent and underserved citizens within their own communities. Drawing on their wealth of knowledge and experience, US partners guide the overseas partners through the concepts of community planning, health improvement, community organization, collaboration, and health promotion.
Under the Healthy Communities paradigm, partners work together to shift the focus of healthcare delivery from acute crisis response to a more proactive system that promotes disease prevention through healthier behaviors and provides services appropriate to the needs of individuals within the community.
US partners provide their overseas counterparts with information and access to programs that can be molded and adapted to meet the unique needs of the host community. Because of their extensive experience, the US professionals can assist their partners throughout the needs assessment process. Working together, they learn how to identify the root causes of key health problems plaguing their community and formulate effective responses. A community-based coalition gathers data, identifies gaps in available information, conducts surveys, and analyzes the data to best redesign the community's healthcare system. In this way, healthcare services remain local and the community can design specific interventions to respond directly to the issues its members face.
The entire Healthy Communities process is dynamic, energizing, and empowering. AIHA’s experience working with our partners to improve community health using the Healthy Communities paradigm clearly shows its value for strengthening the impact of the partnership program and expanding the work of partner institutions throughout the region.
Click here for a phase-by-phase journey through the AIHA Healthy Communities planning process. |
Overview
