Creating Healthy Communities by Working Effectively Across Sectors

The purpose of this presentation is to describe a multi-sectoral collaboration to promote and protect the health of youth living in high risk communities.  With support from the Centers for Disease Control and the Public Health Institute, the Colorado Springs Community Center Collaborative was created through the 2013 National Applied Leadership Award.  This award was able to bring together a diverse group of community leaders representing multiple sectors of society to learn about and practice skills needed for successful collaborative leadership practice through Center for Health Leadership and Practice to increase capacity for genuinely collaborative and productive partnerships between government, healthcare and community leaders through training and experiential learning. Throughout the year, the collaborative developed a structured organizational framework used to guide collaborative activities, a logic model to guide program implementation and adopted a model used for monitoring and evaluation.  This presentation will highlight a local community health success story, demonstrating how intersectoral leadership development enhances the collective work of community/public health educators, public health service providers, city government and community based organizations to work to reduce health disparities and inequity.  Successes include achievements and lessons learned about how to move a community health agenda forward by leveraging multi-sector partnerships and community relationships.