Culturally- Competent Community Engagement Model to Create Prevention-Oriented Logic Model in City Heights, San Diego

This paper evaluates Mid City Community Advocacy Network community engagement model to guide The California Endowment's strategic use of resources under Building Healthy Communities Initiative (BHC) in City Heights, San Diego. The BHC is focusing on Four Big Results: provide health home to all children, increase school attendance, reverse childhood obesity epidemic, and reduce youth violence. Community engagement is a process that involves the community in problem solving and uses the public input to make more informed decisions. The Mid-CITY CAN Community engagement model followed several levels of engagement informing, consulting with, involving, collaborating with and empowering the community. However the approaches taken to engage the community at different levels varied and were modified to meet the ethnic and cultural diversity of the residents. City Heights is home to many refugee immigrant communities where over 30 different languages are spoken. Studies indicate, that women in this community, constrained by their cultural and religious beliefs, need special arrangements to be engaged in the process. This paper summarizes the cultural-competent methods that were used to pursue different levels of engagement. This paper also evaluates the advantages and disadvantages of different methods employed at different levels of community engagement. Finally the paper qualitatively evaluates the attributes of community engagement to create the prevention-oriented logic models on, access to health care, access to healthy food, reduction of youth violence, and reduction of school dropout rates.