How do communities protect and improve the health of their populations? Health care is part of the answer but so are environmental protections, social and educational services, adequate nutrition, and a host of other activities. With concern over funding constraints, making sure such activities are efficient and effective is becoming a high priority. Improving Health in the Community explains how population-based performance monitoring programs can help communities point their efforts in the right direction. Within a broad definition of community health, the committee addresses factors surrounding the implementation of performance monitoring and explores the "why" and "how to" of establishing mechanisms to monitor the performance of those who can influence community health. The book offers a policy framework, applies a multidimensional model of the determinants of health, and provides sets of prototype performance indicators for specific health issues. Improving Health in the Community presents an attainable vision of a process that can achieve community-wide health benefits.

The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina has placed a national spotlight on the shameful state of healthcare for America's poor. In the face of this highly publicized disaster, public health experts are more concerned than ever about persistent disparities that result from income and race. This book tells the story of one groundbreaking approach to medicine that attacks the problem by focusing on the wellness of whole neighborhoods. Since their creation during the 1960s, community health centers have served the needs of the poor in the tenements of New York, the colonias of Texas, the working class neighborhoods of Boston, and the dirt farms of the South. As products of the civil rights movement, the early centers provided not only primary and preventive care, but also social and environmental services, economic development, and empowerment. Bonnie Lefkowitz-herself a veteran of community health administration-explores the program's unlikely transformation from a small and beleaguered demonstration effort to a network of close to a thousand modern health care organizations serving nearly 15 million people. In a series of personal accounts and interviews with national leaders and dozens of health care workers, patients, and activists in five communities across the United States, she shows how health centers have endured despite cynicism and inertia, the vagaries of politics, and ongoing discrimination.

Over half the world's rural population, and many in urban slums, have minimal access to health services. This book describes how to set up new, and develop existing, community-based health care for, by and with, the community.

Review of previous edition: "An extremely popular and valuable resource to students, practitioners and managers in community health care nursing." Journal of Advanced Nursing Community Health Care Nursing has become established as an essential source of reference for all those working in the primary care and community health care domain. The Fourth Edition of this successful text focuses on new emergent agendas which affect primary care and public health education and service delivery/improvement. Comprehensive and accessible, this well established text draws on a wide range of subject experts all aiming for excellence in service delivery, to produce a resource that addresses the key aspects of community health delivery reflecting the reality of the new community/primary care agenda in the United Kingdom. Integrated throughout the book are themes relevant to contemporary community healthcare nursing, including Self Managed Care/Managed Care Pathways, Long Term Conditions, Palliative care and End of Life Care, Urgent and Unscheduled Care, Offender Care, and Continuing/Intermediate Care. The result is a book which focuses on new opportunities for contemporary practice, service delivery/improvement and education response within the context of the modernised primary and public healthcare service Key features: New edition of a well-established and successful text Written by experts in the field Examines competencies in practice Includes evidence-based guidelines and integrates national service framework requirements Includes new chapters on Advanced Nursing Practice and competence assessment, modernised primary healthcare workforce and workforce change, Commissioning, and user and public engagement

Grounded in a transdisciplinary approach, this groundbreaking text provides extensive, evidence-based information on the value of communities as the primary drivers of their own health and well-being. It describes foundational community health concepts and procedures and presents proven strategies for engaging communities as resources for their own health improvementñan important determinant of individual well-being. It is based on recommendations by the World Health Organization's International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health and on the premise that healthy communities are those with populations that participate in their own health promotion, maintenance, and sustenance. The book is unique in its integration of environmental and social justice issues as they significantly affect the advancement of community health. The text focuses on community-oriented health interventions informed by prevention, inclusiveness, and timeliness that both promote better health and are more cost effective than individually focused interventions. It addresses the foundations of community-oriented health services including their history, social determinants, concepts, and policies as well as the economics of community-oriented health services and health disparities and equity. It covers procedures for designing, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating sustainable community health coalitions along with tools for measuring their success. Detailed case studies describe specific settings and themes in U.S. and international community health practice in which communities are both enactors and beneficiaries. An accompanying instructor's manual provides learning exercises, field-based experiential assignments, and multiple-choice questions. A valuable resource for students and practitioners of education, public policy, and social services, this book bridges the perspectives of environmental justice, public health, and community well-being and development, which, while being mutually interdependent, have rarely been considered together. KEY FEATURES: Offers a new paradigm for improving public health through community-driven health coalitions Includes evidence-based strategies for engaging communities in the pursuit of health Demonstrates how to design, implement, monitor, and evaluate community health partnerships Presents transdisciplinary approaches that consider environmental and social justice variables Includes contributions of international authors renowned in community health research and practice

The anthrax incidents following the 9/11 terrorist attacks put the spotlight on the nation's public health agencies, placing it under an unprecedented scrutiny that added new dimensions to the complex issues considered in this report. The Future of the Public's Health in the 21st Century reaffirms the vision of Healthy People 2010, and outlines a systems approach to assuring the nation's health in practice, research, and policy. This approach focuses on joining the unique resources and perspectives of diverse sectors and entities and challenges these groups to work in a concerted, strategic way to promote and protect the public's health. Focusing on diverse partnerships as the framework for public health, the book discusses: The need for a shift from an individual to a population-based approach in practice, research, policy, and community engagement. The status of the governmental public health infrastructure and what needs to be improved, including its interface with the health care delivery system. The roles nongovernment actors, such as academia, business, local communities and the media can play in creating a healthy nation. Providing an accessible analysis, this book will be important to public health policy-makers and practitioners, business and community leaders, health advocates, educators and journalists.

A socio-ecological approach to community health and the promotion of health care across the lifespan, with an increased emphasis on health literacy, intervention and health promotion.