High-Performing Local Health Departments Relate Their Experiences at Community Engagement in Emergency Preparedness
| Autor: | Sanjana Ravi, Diane Meyer, Monica Schoch-Spana, Laura Biesiadecki, Geoffrey Mwaungulu |
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| Rok vydání: | 2017 |
| Předmět: |
Organizational culture
Context (language use) Interviews as Topic 03 medical and health sciences 0302 clinical medicine Nursing Humans 030212 general & internal medicine Qualitative Research Community resilience 030505 public health Local Government Community engagement business.industry Health Policy Public Health Environmental and Occupational Health Civil Defense Public relations Organizational Culture Preparedness Workforce Public Health Patient Participation 0305 other medical science business Psychology Health department Qualitative research |
| Zdroj: | Journal of public health management and practice : JPHMP. 24(4) |
| ISSN: | 1550-5022 |
| Popis: | Context Local health departments (LHDs) are implementing a national mandate to engage community partners, including individuals, businesses, and community- and faith-based organizations in the larger public health emergency preparedness (PHEP) enterprise. Objective Investigate how LHDs of varying size and resource levels successfully engage the community in PHEP to help uncover "best practices" that aspiring agencies can replicate, particularly in low-resource environments. Design In-depth, semistructured qualitative interviews with practitioners from 9 highly performing LHDs. Setting Participating agencies comprised equal amounts of small (serving 500 000 residents) LHDs and were diverse in terms of geographic region, rural-urban environment, and governance structure. Participants A cross section of LHD staff (n = 34) including agency leaders, preparedness coordinators, public information officers, and health educators/promoters. Main outcome measure Local health department performance at community engagement as determined by top scores in 2 national LHD surveys (2012, 2015) regarding community engagement in PHEP. Results Based on key informant accounts, high-performing LHDs show a holistic, organization-wide commitment to, rather than discrete focus on, community engagement. Best practices clustered around 5 domains: administration (eg, top executive who models collaborative behavior), organizational culture (eg, solicitous rather than prescriptive posture regarding community needs), social capital (eg, mining preexisting community connections held by other LHD programs), workforce skills (eg, cultural competence), and methods/tactics (eg, visibility in community events unrelated to PHEP). Conclusions For LHDs that wish to enhance their performance at community engagement in PHEP, change will entail adoption of evidence-based interventions (the technical "what") as well as evidence-based administrative approaches (the managerial "how"). Smaller, rural LHDs should be encouraged that, in the case of PHEP community engagement, they have unique social assets that may help offset advantages that larger, more materially resourced metropolitan health departments may have. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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