Building and Strengthening Partnerships
Assessment Protocol for Excellence in Public Health (APEXPH), 1991, from National Association of County Health Officials.:The tool is an eight-step process for assessing community health status and planning for improvement. It is based on the principles of environmental justice, community collaboration, and locally appropriate decision making. Guidance is designed to be easily accessible and flexible enough to meet the needs of a variety of communities with differing health concerns. In 1998, an accompanying software program was developed and made available, and a new product build on lessons learned from APEXPH, "Mobilizing for Action through Planning and Partnerships (MAPP) is also available.
Community Tool Box:The mission of the Community Tool Box is to promote community health and development by connecting people, ideas, and resources. The website provides tools needed to build healthier and stronger communities. The web site also provides information for those interested in a variety of community health and development issues and connects individuals to personalized assistance for improving community change efforts.
Partnership Self-Assessment Tool: This easy-to-use web-based free Tool gives partnerships a way to assess how well their collaborative process is working and to identify specific areas they can focus on to make the process work better. The Tool is provided to partnerships at no charge by the Center for the Advancement of Collaborative Strategies in Health at The New York Academy of Medicine with funding from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation.
"Presenting Community-Level Data in an "Outcomes and Indicators" Framework: Lessons from Vermont's Experience" (pdf, 7 pages) In a forthright discussion, David Murphey of Vermont's Human Service Agency acknowledge that any definition involves trade-offs", and provides a very readable paper on how they arrived at the definition of their community.