Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #105632

Laura M. Hall, MS, Carol L. Ireson, PhD, Genia McKee, BA, Svetla Slavova, MS, Mirela Ungureanu, and Kathy Adams, BSN. Kentucky Injury Prevention and Research Center, University of Kentucky College of Public Health, 333 Waller Avenue, Suite 206, Lexington, KY 40504, 859-257-5678, clires0@uky.edu

In recent decades, coalitions have been established to address many public health problems. Coalitions have increasingly focused their attention on injury prevention as a public health issue. Extensive questions remain about which processes advance coalition development. A partnership between the Kentucky Injury Prevention and Research Center at the University of Kentucky and four rural injury prevention coalitions has been under way to create a critical pathway that outlines the developmental stages of a successful coalition. A model was developed through the analysis of organizational structure and processes of each coalition by examining the coalition mission statement, bylaws/rules of operation, the use of committees within the organization, frequency of meetings, and historical documents such as minutes, agendas, and logs of the coalition. Newspaper articles and public service announcements were also analyzed to understand the type of projects and programs that the coalitions have implemented. Themes from this analysis guided researchers in the development of the critical pathway that documents the stages that a community based coalition must proceed through. The model describes the milestones that coalitions need to achieve from initial formation and identify the critical components that must be present to move a forming coalition to the next stages. The critical components include defining coalition structure, coalition enhancement, funding, community support, leadership, education and outreach to the community, membership, partnerships, data/evaluation, and publicity. Information provided in this session will be valuable to health professionals that work with community health coalitions as well as citizens that participate in local coalitions.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe the milestones that coalitions need to meet from the initial formation stage to the outcome stage.
• Define the critical components that must be present in a coalition in order to move to the next developmental stage(s).

Keywords: Collaboration, Injury Prevention

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.

Recorded presentation