The Road to Community Change

What We Do › Healthy Communities › Other Resources › AIHA Brochure: Safer Streets, Longer Lives: Creating A Healthy Community › The Road to Community Change

The following six phases outline the process that AIHA's three healthy communities partnerships have followed in building community support to identify problems and solutions at the local level.

Phase 1: Mobilizing for Change

An initial workshop at the partner site provides an overview of the healthy communities planning process and identifies the strengths and weaknesses in planning for change in a community. Partners assess training and data needs, and devise strategies to collect appropriate information to set priorities for future planning activities.

Phase 2: Partnership Building, Planning and Tailoring the Process

Partners visit model healthy communities projects in the US for consultation and observation. They continue training in community health analysis, including identification of key stakeholders, consensus building, use of existing resources and the role of the change agent. This phase also includes consultation with community members and key professionals in community planning, epidemiology and health education.

Phase 3: Community Health Assessment Activities

Partners organize an initial committee meeting to review available population-based data and identify the community's perception of its priority health needs and problems. This process involves multiple sectors of the community, mobilizing local leaders to establish focus groups and conduct a community survey.

Phase 4: Establishing Health/Program Priorities

Partners reconvene to present findings from the community survey and focus groups, and to establish consensus among key community stakeholders on priorities for intervention.

Phase 5: Development and Implementation of Community Intervention Strategy

Partners are exposed to a range of intervention strategies that address the priority issues identified during earlier phases. They identify program models with transferable content and program components that are adaptable to their own circumstances. Partners identify the resources required for implementation, develop an implementation plan, and initiate the intervention strategy.

Phase 6: Monitoring and Evaluation

It is essential that a systematic evaluation process is established to monitor the quality of the intervention strategy and the impact it has on the community. The monitoring process is jointly planned with input from community stakeholders, while partners are responsible for monitoring the implementation strategies and gathering outcome data.

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