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

Abstract #117306

Marcos Athanasoulis, DrPH, MPH, Research Information Technology, Harvard Medical School, na, na, na, MA na, 617-432-2185, marcos@hms.harvard.edu and Deryk Van Brunt, DrPH, School of Public Health, UC Berkeley, 140 Warren Hall, #7360, Berkeley, CA 94720.

Background: The Healthy Communities Foundation (HC Foundation) is a non-profit organization with the mission to provide information systems to communities to help better track, manage and improve local quality of life issues. The HC network is based on the approaches developed by the healthy cities movement over the last several decades including a belief that the health of a community must be viewed holistically, that communication between and within citizens and policy makers is of paramount importance and that community health approaches should be built upon evidence based practices.

Methods: The HC Foundation has developed an internet-based community quality of life-management system called the Healthy Community Network (HC Network). The HC Network gives to community managers of quality of life concerns, professionals, and the general public the ability to 1) become aware of, and track, quality of life indicators; 2) access a database of successful practices to improve quality of life at a local level and 3) help facilitate the communication needed to effect change. The foundation is now embarking on a pilot of the system in five communities across the US. We will provide a brief demonstration of the system.

Conclusion: In this presentation we outline the components of the system, the scientific basis for the components, the role of evidence based practices in the system, and the plans for the dissemination and evaluation of the system.

Learning Objectives: At the end of the session attendees will be able to

• Identify key features of a centralized online community portal
• Understand how content and community health indicators can be combined in an online system
• Understand how change theory applies to community health

Keywords: Community Collaboration, Health Information

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.