Sarah J Beversdorf, MPH/MSW¹, Syed M Ahmed, MD, MPH, Dr PH¹, Marie Wolff, PhD², and Tovah Bates, Ph D¹. (1) Family & Community Medicine, Medical College of Wisconsin, 8701Watertown Plank Road, Milwaukee, WI 53226, 414-456-4379, scrome@mcw.edu, (2) Dept. of Family and Community Medicine, Medical College of Wisconsin, 8701 Watertown Plank Road, Milwaukee, WI 53226

The healthy cities/healthy communities concept can be traced back to the 19th century public health movement and organizations such as the Health of Towns Association in Britain. Over time the movement has evolved, and one of the most recent developments includes community-academic partnerships to improve health. Creating healthier communities through community-academic partnerships requires a unique set of skills and abilities that are not often taught in school. For instance, partnership formation, conflict transformation, and evaluation, do not typically appear in curricula; however, these are essential skills for creating healthier communities.

In order to create healthy communities through effective partnerships, faculty and staff within academic institutions must learn skills, such as partnership formation, designing and implementing community-based health programs/research, conflict transformation, and evaluation. This poster will offer the learner skills and knowledge that can be utilized immediately to build healthier communities through community-academic partnerships. While the primary emphasis is on how academia can improve its capacity to build community-academic partnerships, individuals not based in an academic institution can also benefit from the information.

Learning Objectives: