142nd APHA Annual Meeting and Exposition

Annual Meeting Recordings are now available for purchase

301880
Collective Impact: Academic-Community Partnerships for Promoting Workplace Wellness

142nd APHA Annual Meeting and Exposition (November 15 - November 19, 2014): http://www.apha.org/events-and-meetings/annual
Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Jennifer Cookingham, Public Health Undergraduate Student , Department of Nursing and Public Health, Colby-Sawyer College, New London, NH
Ellen Graham, Public Health Undergraduate Student , Department of Nursing and Public Health, Colby-Sawyer College, New London, NH
Kay Aung, Public Health Undergraduate Student , Department of Nursing and Public Health, Colby-Sawyer College, New London, NH
Shari Goldberg, PhD, RN , Department of Nursing and Public Health, Colby-Sawyer College, New London, NH
Introduction: A community hospital in northern New England received a significant financial endowment to promote wellness within its rural service area. The endowment supports a centralized hospital-based infrastructure with dedicated staff and a structured process.  Using community-level data, a steering committee representing a broad range of community organizations identified a shared mission of promoting healthy eating and active living, and a strategy to work together to create a culture of workplace wellness in the region. Undergraduate public health students were enlisted to collect baseline data to identify appropriate interventions and enable measurable change.

Methods: Students developed a database of all area businesses. The standardized Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Worksite Health ScoreCards survey was piloted and subsequently administered to participating employers. The survey captures information about implemented evidence-based health promotion interventions. Data were imported into STATA, providing a region-wide data set, and analyzed.  

Results: Findings identified existing assets and gaps in region-wide workplace wellness programs, enabling the development of collective resource and cost-sharing strategies among regional businesses. Survey data provide standard baseline measures enabling evaluation of collective improvement at the regional level over time.

Discussion: This wellness initiative applied the collective impact framework across several systems: the student research team, the wellness initiative executive steering committee, regional employers and the greater community of the hospital service area. This project fostered capacity in employers, employees, the community, and professional development of students, and set the foundation for future initiatives.

Learning Areas:

Assessment of individual and community needs for health education
Occupational health and safety
Social and behavioral sciences
Systems thinking models (conceptual and theoretical models), applications related to public health

Learning Objectives:
Identify a role for students in a community wellness initiative. List the five conditions of collective impact as applied to this project.

Keyword(s): Community-Based Partnership & Collaboration, Wellness

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: As a junior undergraduate public health student, I am qualified to participate in the Youth Roundtable for the Community-Based Public Health Caucus. My work on a regional wellness initiative included networking with local businesses, with a focus on improving employee health. A standardized procedure was also developed to administer surveys and analyze and present the data. This was an example of active student involvement in a public health initiative.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.