Source Materials for the Healthy Communities Toolkit

Community and faith-based organizations (CFBOs) play a critical role in promoting health and improving access to healthcare across the nation. A recent study found that Americans receive only half of recommended preventive care, highlighting the need for greater partnership between state/local government, hospitals, health clinics and CFBOs to bring such care to communities (Koh and Sebelius, 2010). In 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, referred to below as the “Affordable Care Act”) was enacted, in part to expand access to preventive care. Several of the law’s titles (e.g., Title IV, Prevention of Chronic Diseases and Improving Public Health) offer new opportunities for CFBOs to expand their community health workforce, to access funding for preventive services and programs promoting healthy lifestyles and overall physical and mental health, and to strengthen partnerships with state and local governments and other actors in the health system, such as hospitals and health clinics.

Partnerships such as these are important now more than ever. Almost one in two adults suffers from a chronic condition, such as heart disease, kidney disease, or diabetes. They account for a substantial proportion of deaths and are expensive to treat. But these diseases are preventable, and the most basic elements for good health are all implementable at the community level.

To build the capacity of CFBOs to leverage new opportunities for participating in the promotion of health and well-being, communities will need resources, including expert guidance on the opportunities presented by the Affordable Care Act, on available programs and interventions for strengthening preventive care, and on the evidence base surrounding them. The study provides (1) content or “source material” for a toolkit that will summarize this information for a CFBO audience, with particular attention to ways CFBOs can address the needs of underserved or hard to reach populations; and (2) a summary of how the source material was developed. An initial outline for this source material was developed by the Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships (CFBNP). RAND then refined the outline and developed the raw text that serves as the source material for the toolkit. The CFBNP will take the raw text and transform it into a toolkit for use by community and faith leaders that will be part of the array of resources offered by the CFBNP. The source material is meant to serve as a broad initial framework for a “living” toolkit that the CFBNP will continue to expand (e.g., adding more topic areas) and augment (e.g., adding more content within the current topic areas) over time as advances occur in the fields of public health and medicine and health reform continues.

Reference

Koh, H., and K. Sebelius, “Promoting Prevention Through the Affordable Care Act,” New England Journal of Medicine, September 30, 2010, pp. 1056–1058.