Community engagement and sustainable planning: Follow-up for the Rural Pandemic Influenza Public Engagement (R-PIPE) Project

In 2009, immediately following the outbreak of the H1N1 pandemic influenza, the USA Center for Rural Public Health Preparedness at the Texas A&M School of Rural Public Health worked with local and regional public health representatives, as well as local elected officials in two rural Texas counties to implement the Rural Pandemic Influenza Public Engagement (R-PIPE) project. R-PIPE Project partners identified and convened a broad range of local stakeholders into county work groups to discuss local H1N1 issues and experiences in their communities. The work groups, with coordination and facilitation assistance from the USA Center, met bi-monthly to assess local challenges and feasible recommendations and solutions. Recommendations and action items were presented to local decision-makers, as well as the community-at-large, at town hall meetings tailored for their communities. This project served as a demonstration project of effective methodologies to educate and engage rural community stakeholders in local planning and policy development and resulted in a rural community planning process model. Throughout the process, recommendations, accomplishments, steps in progress, and steps to be accomplished were tracked. Both county work groups agreed to continue meeting, without coordination and facilitation assistance from the USA Center. This presentation will share results, based on process and outcome measures, of follow-up with these two counties at 6-month and 1-year intervals, to demonstrate sustainability of this rural community engagement and local planning process model.