Evaluation of community public health partnerships: Case study of four social networks

Objectives: The purpose of the study is to illustrate how methods of social network analysis can be used for quantitative evaluation of the effects of partnerships on performance indicators of a county public health system.

Methods: A combination of qualitative (case study) and quantitative (social network analysis) methods was used to analyze four types of interorganizational networks in Cobb county, Georgia. We interviewed principal collaborators from: the county board of health, tobacco prevention program, health promotion program for kids and county chamber of commerce about the types and intensities of their partnership relations. We created graphs of these four networks and calculated quantitative measures of partnership network structures used in social network analysis (density , centrality, betweeness). We evaluated associations of these structural measures with measures of performance of the county public health system.

Results: We found that there was substantial variation in structural measures across four networks. Our results also suggest positive associations between the quantitative measures of social networks (such as density) and perceived public health outcomes. However, our inspection of partnership graphs revealed that the four networks seemed to be operating almost totally independent of each other. The only partner that kept these four networks loosely connected was an insurance provider.

Conclusions: Additional efforts are needed to enhance communication opportunities between public health partners and networks at community level. Quantitative framework for evaluation of interorganizational cooperation in public health developed in the study may provide further support for promoting partnerships to improve community health outcomes.