Center for Rural Engagement

Phone:

(812) 855-4789

Email:

prbarnes@indiana.edu

Campus:

IU Bloomington

Project abstract

Community health improvement processes (CHIPs) are used to garner active participation from residents, public institutions, and voluntary organizations in addressing the needs of the public’s health. These processes provide a framework that allow residents and organizations to consider sociopolitical factors influencing health conditions. Mobilizing a diverse group of people to talk about these matters stimulates innovative approaches and partnerships to enhance inter-organizational connectivity and reduce duplication of resources. Communities are then able to strategically develop measurable indicators to monitor increases and declines in health status over the course of 3 to 5 years.

Although models are readily available for community use, it is a daunting task to bring together various sectors of the community to create an action-oriented plan. Communities often times need a neutral facilitator possibly diffuse bias of organizations and individual volunteers in selecting health priorities. Therefore, the purpose of this project is to develop CHIPs in 6 rural communities that identify strategies aligning with health issues prioritized in community health assessments. Similarities and differences in stakeholder participation are explored. The overall goal of this project is to create a practice model that can be adopted and implemented in other rural counties.

Campus partners

• School of Social Work
• School of Nursing
• Office of Vice Provost for Research

Community partners

• Daviess Community Hospital
• Live Well Partnership
• Daviess County Systems of Care
• Orange County Health Coalition
• Southern Indiana Community Healthcare (SICHC)
• IU Health Paoli
• THRIVE
• Martin County Community Foundation
• Martin County Systems of Care
• Greene County Hospital
• Purdue Extension
• Memorial Hospital and Health Care Center

Counties involved

Crawford, Daviess, Greene, Martin, Orange, Owen