Kay Lovelace’s research while affiliated with Emory University and other places

Strengthening communities and the roles of individuals in building community life can help prevent disease and disability and expand resources for promoting social justice. This chapter discusses addressing social injustice through community transformation and the roles that public health workers can play in this process by developing authentic partnerships with communities, recognizing and building on community strengths, and using public health approaches that address the root causes of health disparities. Communities can be strengthened in their capacity to address their health problems and the root causes of these problems. Public health workers need new skill sets and intervention strategies to assist communities in meeting the challenges that they face. A text box discusses strengthening communities in low- and middle-income countries. A second text box describes the work of a community-based foundation (the MetroWest Health Foundation) in addressing social injustice at the local level.

We studied a national collaboration to prevent the spread of 2009 H1N1 and seasonal influenza, and highlighted how a partnership among the Interfaith Health Program (IHP) at Emory University, the Department of Health and Human Services Partnership Center, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) leveraged the distinctive capabilities of local public health, health care, and faith-based organizations in 10 communities around the country. From 2009 to 2016, IHP, ASTHO, and the Partnership Center worked as intermediaries with these partnerships, aligning and amplifying their capacity to extend influenza prevention services for hard-to-reach vulnerable populations. We suggested that intermediary organizations enabled information sharing, co-learning, and dissemination of best practices through horizontal and vertical channels. We recommended practices for these partnerships to engage local networks that share commitments to eliminate health disparities, to use a frame of strengths and assets, and to provide a supportive multilocal, multilevel learning community.