Outreach from ATSDR to provide opportunities for community members to have a role in the public health assessment process. The community is at the heart of all public health activities.Ĭommunity involvement. Community members may include, for example, residents, members of local action groups, local officials, tribal members, health professionals, and local media. People who may be directly affected by site contamination because they currently live near the site or have lived near the site in the past. Terms used throughout this chapter are defined as follows:Ĭommunity. To effectively communicate with the public and foster opportunities for their involvement in the public health assessment process, it is important to understand (1) the basic terminology describing the process, (2) the overall goals and objectives of community involvement, and (3) the roles of the various agency programs in the community involvement process. This chapter provides guidance for the health assessor in each of these areas.Ĥ.1 Definitions, Goals and Objectives, and Program Roles For each site, the team will need to make judgments about which community involvement activities are appropriate based on the site situation, and possibly based on resource availability.įigure 4-1 shows the general components of the community involvement process. Strategies can change over time based on input from the community and other stakeholders throughout the public health assessment process. Not all community involvement activities occur at all sites. Note that community involvement strategies and activities are site-specific-dependent on the community, the site, the possible public health hazard, available resources, and other issues. ATSDR partners may find that some discussions in this chapter are not necessarily relevant to their particular procedures (e.g., use of ATSDR’s Community Involvement Branch), but the process of effective community involvement is the same.
If additional information is needed, contact the health communication involvement or health education specialist on your team. Rather, it describes the tools and resources for an effective site-specific approach.
This chapter is not intended to provide all information about conducting community involvement, health communication, or health promotion activities. This will help your site team initiate and maintain good two-way communication between ATSDR and the community. As a health assessor, it is important for you to have a good understanding of the purpose, approaches and tools for involving the community, and to work effectively with your team to promote community participation during the public health assessment process.
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The purpose of this chapter is to provide information on how to involve the community in the public health assessment process. For all these reasons, effective community involvement is an important part of the public health assessment process. The relationship the team builds with the community will influence how much community members trust you and thus, ultimately, how they react to your public health messages and recommendations.