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The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
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The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
Rachel Shada, MHR, School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, Department of Community Health Sciences, Tulane University, 1440 Canal Street, SL-29, Suite 2323, New Orleans, LA 70112, Michele Lempa, MPH, Department of Community Health Sciences, Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, 1440 Canal Street, SL-29, Suite 2327, New Orleans, LA 70112, 504-585-7100, rshada@tulane.edu, Robert Goodman, PhD, MPH, MA, Community Health Sciences, Tulane school of public health and tropical medicine, 1440 Canal Street, Tidewater Building, SL-29, New Orleans, LA 70112, Adam B. Becker, PhD, MPH, Community Health Sciences, Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, 1440 Canal Street - SL29, New Orleans, LA 70112, and Beverly H. Wright, Ph D, M A, Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, Xavier University, 7325 Palmetto Street, Box 45 B, New Orleans, LA 70125.
The literature is replete with studies indicating that population-based improvements in the quality of community life and health status are intertwined. There is a paucity, however, of well-developed methods and instruments for measuring factors that foster or impede health and quality of life in communities. Such measures are often based solely on anecdotal studies or the values, opinions, and ideas of researchers. Over the past two years, a four-university consortium has been engaged with communities in their respective locales to develop practical measures for community capacity, social capital and related social protective factors. This presentation will focus on the experience of Tulane University’s School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine and the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice at Xavier University of New Orleans in working with several grassroots community groups to discover which aspects of community capacity are most salient in affecting positive community change.
The Tulane/Xavier partnership’s process of working with eight local grass-roots community initiatives raises numerous challenges to the relevancy and accuracy of community capacity measures. The presentation will focus on the distinctive approaches taken by Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine and Xavier to formulate new relationships with the community groups and to develop an instrument to measure community protective factors with national relevance.
Learning Objectives:
Keywords: Community Capacity, Community-Based Partnership
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.