The Healthconnections Model

After gaining this information about how my community was affected, I decided there needed to be more awareness drawn to the existing organizations in the areas I served that addressed or worked on community health initiatives. I began contacting with local organizations to see if they might be interested in partnering with my organization on already organized events in order begin to combine efforts and to let community members know of services in their area. The event we hosted was in the form of a community event

The importance is to foster community engagement, community, stakeholders and Obligation to Engage (of Health Service Providers). The “local health integration network shall engage the community of diverse persons and entities involved with the local health system about that system on an ongoing basis, including about the integrated health service plan and while setting priorities” (c. 4, s. 16 (1)) CE was established as a core function of the LHINs, with the understanding that regional planning is a more appropriate method for assessing and interpreting the local needs of a community. CE needs to be purposeful, accessible and its products transparent to the public and LHIN decision makers" (More about …,

The Better Health Association is a nonprofit company whose objective is simply to increase the health of people through health education, guidance, and diagnosis screening programs. They make an attempt to assist audiences of any age and socioeconomic ranges to gain knowledge of living an even healthy life-style and creating the know-how required to develop healthy and balanced choices. "My role within the company is to secure agreements from at least three major area advertising and marketing agencies to underwrite the creation and production of all Better Health special event programs for the next three to four years. I also, create an active and positive presence for the agency in state-of-the-art social media venues that results in recruitment and assistance to new clients. Monitor and track results quarterly. In addition to, developing systematic marketing plans that address every operational area of Better Health including client services, all fund raising events and general association promotion in all media venues" (https://bluequill.franklin.edu, n.d.).

R., Wilson, S., Brock-Martin, A., Glover, S., & Svendsen, E. R., 2010). The assets that can be used to improve community health are town hall meetings, community advertisements, and community sponsored events.

WellCare Health Plans, Inc. partnered with Microclinics International (MCI) to promote outreach efforts across Kentucky. MCI provides classes that use social relationships to prevent and manage epidemics like diabetes for communities in need. The classes demonstrate how to make effective, long lasting healthy behavior changes that relate to eating habits and physical activity. Participants can then take the education back to their communities and be a catalyst for healthy change. WellCare and MCI are collecting data to evaluate the impact of social service, to show how the program improves the health outcomes for those

Healthy People 2010 and now Health People 2020 is a governmental sponsored program in which there are science-based objectives for the health of all Americans. The program was established to: 1) encourage collaboration across regions and communities; 2) empower individuals to make informed decisions about their health and to take some responsibility for their healthcare, and 3) to measure the impact of health prevention activities across the nation. The power of the initiative is that it encourages prevention and communication across states, regions, ethnicities, and communities (About Health People, 2012).

The Diabetes and Obesity program at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles has provided care to the Children that live in in Southside Coalition. Many children and adults of low socioeconomic status live in Southside Coalition is a non-profit consortium of primary care community clinics located in South Los Angeles due the disproportionately affected by the obesity epidemic (Diabetes and Community Engagement, 2016). The coalition building model has been effective in

Union County stakeholders participated in a Health Connections Council project to conduct several caregivers focus groups. As part of a county needs assessment, the focus groups were to document caregiver needs. The primary issue identified during the assessment was lack of case management support to caregiver programs and services. As a result, a caregiver support coalition is being developed in the city of Elizabeth.

Strengthening community action is instrumental in establishing positive health outcomes in young people. In strengthening community action, various support networks are put into place to not only prevent

The cornerstone of the care model presented in this article is partnership. The partnership among HIV Alliance, LCC, and Community Health Centers of Lane County was based on the recognition that no one entity could effectively tackle the problem of inadequate access to dental care. The partners built on existing strengths to bring to the table key resources, such as expertise in oral health-care delivery, training, and case management, as well as clinical infrastruc- ture, providers, and access to liability insurance. This collaboration experienced some challenges early on, underestimating the time needed to identify and assign roles and responsibilities. Extensive discussion and effort were needed to reach a consensus on key issues, but in the end, these challenges helped to strengthen the collaboration.

This program promotes free health care services, highlights promotion and prevention actions, advances the concept of community ownership and involvement in health activities, and presents a cross-sectorial approach to priority health problems, including differentiation in the provision of public, private and insured services.

It can be difficult to strictly define community health programs, but the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) lays out the definition of public health programs as, “any organized public health action, such as direct services, community mobilization, research, evaluation, surveillance, policy development, laboratory diagnostics, and communication campaigns (Schell et al, 2013).” The emergence of implementation science has driven a rapid increase in studies of how new scientific discoveries are translated and developed into programs (Schell et at, 2013). Unfortunately, a common focus of many community-based health programs has traditionally been program efficacy, while the long-term viability has been a 'latent' concern (Goodman et al., 1987). In other words, there seems to be less attention to what happens to programs after implementation, even though programs typically need time to reach maturity to allow for fulfillment of health benefits. To benefit from the resources invested into public health research and program development, we need to understand factors that prevent community based health program sustainability.

While generalizing can be difficult, providing strong evidence to support the roles of communities influencing positive health outcomes is more so. This literature review will attempt to address the following questions as they relate to communities advancing health:

We believe that community involvement and engagement are the first key steps when it comes to addressing public health issues in the community. As Haber stated it, it is “a way to build greater knowledge of local issues and increase consensus around interventions” (Haber, 2011).

Community-driven efforts need local organizations and groups in action. In public health, local organizations and Non-Government