Scaling Community Health Coalitions: The Well Connected Communities Pilot Initiative

Introduction

In 2014, the Extension Committee on Organization and Policy introduced and disseminated a national framework for health and wellness (Braun et al., 2014). Soon after, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation partnered with Cooperative Extension and the National 4-H Council to launch a community-based health initiative known as Well Connected Communities (WCC). This initiative was designed to launch, grow, and sustain health coalitions to conduct needs assessments, develop action plans, and transform communities. Utah State University was one of the first five pilot-funded institutions.

Each institution selected three communities designated as planner, implementer, and innovator for implementing the WCC initiative. The labels reflect increasing levels of community readiness in terms of community health coalition infrastructure. Planner communities were required to develop a coalition and conduct a needs assessment. Implementer communities were to grow a coalition and complete a needs assessment and action plan. Innovator communities did all of the above and executed an action plan while also training volunteers.

Here we outline the implementation and outcomes of the Utah program. We identify challenges, solutions, and results that occurred in the communities related to the process of establishing, growing, and sustaining health coalitions at different levels of readiness. Lastly, we provide experience-based guidance for others wishing to further the work of operationalizing Extension as a backbone for health promotion (Parisi et al., 2018).

Program Launch

Our team comprising a health and wellness specialist, a 4-H specialist, and four faculty members with health and wellness expertise reviewed competitive WCC applications from interested Utah communities. The three counties selected were distinct with regard to cultural, demographic, and geographic characteristics, and each had a unique self-selected health focus. We placed the majority of grant funding at the county level, including funding for half-time local coordinators, recognizing that community efforts should be led from within.

Community-Building Process

The starting point, challenges, and solutions for each county are outlined in Table 1.

Implications for Extension

Replication requirements based on our experiences are outlined in Table 2. Elements covered by state infrastructure or matches, versus what was provided through grant support, are explained. Overall, communities at varying levels of readiness required different levels of support and achieved different goals.

Every community was successful in securing additional external funds to continue its work, ranging from state and regional support to funding from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and U.S. Department of Agriculture. The successes and challenges of our implementation of this initiative have implications for others in Extension:

• National and local health prevention issues have a place in Extension programs.
• County Extension faculty have the capacity to lead the creation of or enhance existing coalitions that address local health priorities through youth–adult partnerships.
• Creating dialogue among community members and health organizations and agencies leads to more culturally responsive and sensitive prevention/intervention programming.
• Extension can provide community health coalitions with a network of community contacts, meeting and event facilities, educational resources, needs assessments, grant writing support, budgetary support, professional guidance, and mentorship.
• Those resources Extension can provide may lead to new community partnerships, including with behavioral health agencies, hospitals, law enforcement, criminal justice units, and many others.
• In our tribal community, our team struggled to move forward until we had a local cultural guide coordinating efforts, and in Davis County efforts stalled until members of the Latino community were more fully brought into the existing health coalition. Having personnel who can serve as community-relevant cultural guides is a key to success.

The Utah Well Connected Communities launch suggests that the Cooperative Extension System is ready to partner on public health initiatives on a larger scale. Scaling that work to the readiness of individual communities is a key to success. Communities new to this effort may require more resources and more substantial support to achieve their goals; conversely, the payoff to working in these communities may be more pronounced once a coalition is established.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Utah State University Cooperative Extension for funding two full-time-effort positions for the duration of the grant, allowing the great work described herein to happen. In particular, we are grateful for the administrative support of Dr. Brian Higginbotham and Ms. Margie Memmott in spearheading the application process and supporting the team throughout the process as well as Vice President Ken White and Dr. Gretchen Peacock for hosting the national team during site visits. Lastly, we are grateful to the members of the Ute tribal community who hosted our team for a harvest session and to the Latino teen coalition for hosting us and kicking off our efforts in the Clearfield neighborhood.

References

Braun, B., Bruns, K., Cronk, L., Fox, L. K., Koukel, S., Le Menestral, S., . . . Warren, T. (2014). Cooperative Extension's national framework for health and wellness [Issue brief]. Retrieved from https://nifa.usda.gov/resource/national-framework-health-and-wellness

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