A community coalition approach to wellness promotion: Examining one community foundation's process

The research on promoting behavior change to improve health is both wide and deep (Glanz, Rimer & Viswanath, 2008; Roussos & Fawcett, 2000). A less-studied approach is a broad-based, comprehensive initiative engaging a whole community in encouraging, supporting, and adopting health-promoting behaviors. This research analyzes how a community wellness foundation in the Midwest creates and empowers five community coalitions to develop comprehensive wellness plans for their communities. Using a qualitative, grounded theory approach, we interviewed foundation staff and coalition members; collected archival data (e.g. meeting minutes); and conducted observations of coalition and foundation meetings. We coded and analyzed this data to examine how the coalitions formed and developed their wellness plans, and the role of the foundation in these processes. Our results suggest two network processes – brokerage and tapping into central connectors - were leveraged to 1) help foster the organic creation of diverse, grass-roots coalitions with representatives from different community groups and 2) connect coalitions with one another to share best practices and support one another. At the same time, the foundation provided coalitions with a guiding framework (of steps, deliverables, understandings). Together, these top-down and bottom-up processes led to the assembly of coalitions with broad-reach and a sense of ownership; and enabled them to formulate wellness plans that are based on legitimate field-level models, and yet rooted in local needs and wants (local legitimacy). We will 1) discuss the role of wellness foundations in shaping community health, and 2) evaluate components of two coalitions' comprehensive wellness plans.