HealthyPlaces.org > Framework
Overview > Operating System to Address Challenges
An Operating
System to
Address
Challenges
We
continue to develop an operating system, or framework, to
address these three challenges:
The framework includes these components:
Healthy Places Leader-to-Leader Community – a
Healthy Places Leader-to-Leader Community typically consists
of leaders and groups connecting and communicating knowledge
across nested levels. Click
here to see a diagram in a new window. The system
of nested levels, which can expand or contract to incorporate
as many levels as needed, consists of teams that have two-way
communication between adjacent levels. To maintain connection
between levels, teams on adjacent levels have at least one
member in common.
For example, the director of a state-level organization might
be a member of the team at the top level (state and regional
leaders with technical expertise) and a member of a regional
team for Northeast Kansas. At least one member of the Northeast
Kansas team would also be a community leader, perhaps a family
physician working in Shawnee County. Similar connections
between adjacent levels having members in common occur throughout
the system. Having the teams at various levels also allows
cross-site collaboration because the teams gather together
peers working in similar places and situations.
The Leader-to-Leader community is led by a small group of
experts who follow a process to build the skills and efficacy
of local leaders participating in the Community Hub. Our
Healthy Places staff are experts at delivering services to
implement the Community Hub intervention strategy. We have
also developed an intervention protocol and curriculum resources
for other experts to develop their own Community Hubs.
Healthy Places Community Hub© – A self-sustaining
learning network and diffusion system that drives community
planning, evaluation, and feedback around physical activity
and nutrition opportunities, accessibility, and program quality
improvement for children and youth.
Consistent with our diffusion
model, a Community Hub is developed. This collaborative group
learns together, works together,
and provides a way for people at a local, or community, level
to develop skills needed to promote healthy eating and physical
activity to youth.
Each site is represented in the Community
Hub by the three leaders of the places that come into day-to-day
contact with
the youth. The Community Hub meets 4 times a year with intervention
project staff, participates in a monthly conference call,
and interacts continuously on the web, using this website’s “Community
Network.”
In each face-to-face and phone session, the
Community Hub is led by the intervention staff as it goes
through a goal-setting
and feedback process. The Community Hub members who work
in the “Places” will learn to promote physical
activity and healthy eating. The intervention staff will
provide the Place Leaders with programs or strategies (evidence-based
interventions) that have worked (brought about policy, program
and environmental changes) in similar situations. As part
of the Community Hub, Place Leaders receive technical training
on evidence-based interventions and connect with others in
their region and state.
Because the resources and needs of
each Place vary widely, the activities (evidence-based interventions)
in the targeted
Places at each site will also vary widely. Within the Community
Hub, Place Leaders follow a place-based planning model. They
will choose a number of strategic objectives, accounting
for the fact that skills and self and collective efficacy
for environmental change are developed through social persuasion,
vicarious modeling experiences, and mastery experiences (Bandura,
1996; 1997).
Because Place Leaders and Healthy Places Change
Teams need to build environmental change skills, the diffusion
system makes it easier to develop and locate resources
that they need. The Place Leaders and local communities leaders
will use these resources during the planning and implementation
process. The intention is that leaders, both at the Place
and in the local community, are able to use the resources
without continued dependence on experts.
To implement a Community Hub, contact the K-State
Community Health Institute about technical assistance. (Click here
to open a new window with the contact information.)
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Healthy Places Change Team© – a
self-sustaining youth-adult leader partnership and coalition
building process
working at each Place (e.g., after-school program site, school
cafeteria). The Change Team is expected to undertake
site planning, evaluation, and feedback to create, promote,
and
provide access to physical activity and healthy eating opportunities
for children and youth.The Place Leaders (three personnel
who participate in the Community Hub) will implement the
Change Team intervention. Implement is defined as developing
policies and practices and delivering the activities (evidence-based
intervention) to provide physical activity and healthy eating
options.
The Site Coordinator leads a youth/adult Healthy
Places Change Team to function like the Community Hub that
operates only at the site level. Therefore, the Community
Hub is a model learning experience for the site coordinator
to lead the Change Team.
The Change Team meets at least monthly
and involves representatives from each grade of youth who
participate at the site. A Site Coordinator will help a Youth
Leader (help is dependent on developmental age) conduct the
meeting. Community/school adult leaders, parents and staff
will be invited to the meeting when appropriate.
Evidence-Based Practices in Community Places – A
menu of programs and strategies that evidence, gathered through
rigorous research, has shown to promote healthy eating and
physical activity. They can be implemented and sustained
in targeted places where children and youth live, learn,
and play, such as out-of-school programs, home, early childhood
education programs, and faith communities.
There is a large, emerging body of research evidence on "what
works" to improve physical activity and eating behaviors. Within health
care,
these challenges are labeled evidence-based medicine and evidence-based
behavioral medicine. People in both of these fields of medicine seek to
improve the quality of practice through providing systematic information on proven
intervention strategies.
For personnel who participate in the Community Hub and in
the Change Team, they will build capacity to make
informed decisions. They will develop skills in selecting
and adapting evidence-based programs and strategies to meet
local needs and to move public health outcomes related to eating,
physical activity, and obesity.
Although control for decisions about
what is best for children and youth are made locally, to
successfully implement quality programming, these decisions
should be informed by evidence-based programs and strategies.
A menu of evidence-based programs and strategies will soon be available
at
this website.
Additional Ways to Learn about Evidence-Based Practices
To
learn about ways to design, report about, and evaluate evidence-based programs,
visit the website www.re-aim.org.
(This will open in a new window.)
For an easy-to-understand explanation of how educators can
identify and benefit from evidence-based practices, visit the
U.S.
Department of Education's website. (This will open in
a new window.)
Click here to learn about working toward outcomes.
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