Practice Toolkit: Finding a Community Partner
What are the medical risk factors or chronic diseases that you are trying to address?
Who are the community residents that are most affected by these risk factors or diseases?
Where community resources in your area are available to help these patients?
Answers to the first two questions should emerge from your practice needs assessment. Here are some tips for identifying helpful community resources in your area:
- Ask the community - Look for local community health promotion activities and organizations that serve high risk community residents in your area. These include local community coalition groups, community advisory panels, state and local health departments, local boards of health, and local health officials.
- Seek advice from other coalition members - There may be existing coalitions or other practices in your system or your area that have previously worked with community partners. Ask health system leaders or local health system coalition groups about these resources and ask about past experiences with community partners.
- Consult your state or local medical association - Some professional medical societies maintain information about community health organizations.
- Search the local yellow pages - As a last resort, search for particular healthcare practices or medical practitioners by specialty or location. You can also try an online yellow page resource like Dex Online, but this can prove challenging unless you already have an idea about a specific resource that you are trying to find.
Teach me more about the principles of an effective partnership Help me to measure the strength of an existing partnership Show me examples of successful community health partnerships
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