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Obstacles to and future goals of ten comprehensive community health promotion projects

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Abstract

Over 100 project staff, community coalition members, and other representatives from 10 comprehensive community health promotion projects in the western United States were surveyed two years into a three year funding cycle about: (1) the problems or obstacles they judged as preventing successful completion of their current goals and objectives, and (2) future goals and objectives they envisioned for their projects. The key issues confronting respondents were diverse, although issues around the process of implementing community health promotion programs were cited more frequently than issues related to the content of health promotion. When respondents were asked to prioritize Future Goals in the second survey, consensus across communities was obtained despite broad differences in the type of community surveyed and the health problem targeted. This study identifies the common organizational and community development problems faced by newly emerging community health promotion programs and has implications for other communities involved in designing, implementing, and evaluating community-wide health promotion programs.

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Drs. Altman (Associate Director), Howard-Pitney (Evaluation Director), Rogers (Director) and Mr. Endres (Community Organizer) are with the Health Promotion Resource Center, Stanford Center for Research in Disease Prevention, Stanford University School of Medicine. At the time this paper was written, Ms. Linzer was a graduate student at the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts. Kate Lorig, Dr.P.H., is Senior Research Scientist in the Department of Immunology and Rheumatology at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

This research was partially supported by grants from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, Menlo Park, California and the Pew Memorial Trust, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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Altman, D.G., Endres, J., Linzer, J. et al. Obstacles to and future goals of ten comprehensive community health promotion projects. J Community Health 16, 299–314 (1991). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01324515

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