Introduction
Aiming to achieve a healthier community involves a team approach, including the healthcare workers, public health sectors, and community-oriented non-profit organizations that need to go hand in hand and coordinate to bring the team effort for a successful health output. Hence, partnerships among schools, colleges, and public and voluntary organizations play an important role in health promotion. The concept of health is very complex, and achieving greater health needs a comprehensive approach to social, economic, cultural, and environmental factors. The understanding between two agencies from different sectors can provide an overall approach toward health improvement, thus reducing inequities.
What Are the Core Motives of Community Health?
Greater heights in public health and community welfare can be achieved when the public health and community sectors are in partnership. There are seven goals or core areas to be achieved in public health, as described by Lynn and Wilcox. Those goals are:
-
Knowing the needs of an individual or a community for promoting health education.
-
Planning health education programs effectively.
-
Implementing the concept of health education programs.
-
Arranging provisions for health education services.
-
Examining the effectiveness of health education programs.
-
As a resource person in health education.
-
Discussing the health and needs for health education, its concerns, and resources.
It is the responsibility of the health educator to make sure all these seven policies are Implemented to achieve sustainably lasting individual, family, and community health. In recent times, achieving these seven criteria has become effective and easy with community partnership. One of these prominent examples of community partnership was deteriorating public health in Oklahoma in the year 1997, which showed a constant decline in health and welfare irrespective of the city's efforts, a partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and W.K.Kellogg Foundation, which acted as a turning point drastically improving health care.
How Is Community Partnership Seen as a Shared Passion For Handling Health Care Inequity?
Partnerships are most successfully achieved when there is a clear target, and when the partners have the same vision, there is a shred of clear evidence in progress. Community partnership is best achieved when attention to health care is provided irrespectively, looking beyond one’s community or background and solely concentrating on the members who are passionate about reducing social and health inequalities and improving the life quality of the people in an entire community. In community partnership, this is achieved by three major factors. They are:
-
Improvising patient experiences.
-
Making shared decisions.
-
Educating oneself through health literacy.
-
The goal of improving patient health education is regarded as the most important criterion for contributing to the ideas and perspectives of the partnership's members.
-
Shared on a broader aspect of social and environmental factors influencing health.
-
Respecting each other and the community's values, trust, and beliefs is another important factor to consider.
-
Managing a balance between community members and education must be a two-way street.
Strong public health leadership is essential in the early stages of community health care to engage various community partners and to build a wide network with the same mindset and beliefs. Where communication and networking are considered two of the most important qualities because community partnership is primarily a trust-based industry.
Here, the fundamental rule is to be willing to learn from one another, to be aware of the differences, to have background knowledge, and to spread awareness in health education, research, practice, and policy.
Who Are the Community Partners Associated With Public Health?
The community partners are:
-
Public health leaders.
-
Health community companies.
-
Multiple stakeholders.
-
Community members
What Are the Factors Influencing Community Partnership?
Although the growth of public health in a community is tremendously increasing with community partnership, there are or might be some considerable drawbacks in the partnership that affect the work, and human. Some of the drawbacks are:
Collaboration Works: With multiple collaborations going on, there might be a loss of track in vision over the period. The basic ideology should be held and discussed along with the members of the team, and all of them should be involved in the same manner. It is important to have a partnership with teams having the same ideology.
Not Bothering About Credits: Approaching healthcare in the aspect of non-credibility is very important as it is a public-driven work, and credibility and credit should be regarded sparingly. When there is a consideration of credits among partnerships, it creates a disruption of peace and well-being among the community partnership, creating a bias that may affect the appropriate delivery of health care to the people.
To Have Dedicated Staff for the Development of Partnership: Dedicated staff is considered a boon in public health care as it is a community-based work and human resources play a vital role in effectively building it. Staff coordination should also be oriented with the same goal, mindset, and eagerness to know and learn new things for better reach to the community.
Inflow and Outflow of New Members Behaving as a Catalyst in Decision Making: The inflow and outflow of team members, as well as the partnership of board members, stakeholders, lawyers, policymakers, and so on, can alter or affect pre-existing programs. While this may be advancing the efficacy of the program, it can also lead to negative or disastrous effects on the health programs, putting the partnership at risk.
Conclusion
Practicing public health along with community partnership is an exceedingly great opportunity to reach out to greater places in public health. Managing it the right way, knowing the community’s goals, beliefs, wants, infrastructure, and financial statuses, and framing it according to the health policies can be a booming factor in the healthcare sector. It not only helps eradicate borders but also balances inequality in healthcare, especially helping people in financially underdeveloped countries. Most of the community partnerships are done by non-profit organizations like the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations International Children Emergency Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), improving countries like Zambia, Jamaica, and Vietnam.
