Adapting the Institutional Analysis Development Framework to Understand Barriers and Opportunities for Sustainable Communities

To progress towards the development and application of frameworks to provide even the most basic forms of theoretical analysis of community-wide health we must continue to move away from the long standing scientific paradigm that gives priority to imported, singular interventions rather than appropriate community-based combinations of interventions.  Successful place based initiatives of any kind ultimately depend upon collective action among a community’s inhabitants. Therefore, one of the first and most fundamental goals of any effort, which involves addressing poverty and its effect on health at the community level, should be in gaining an understanding of the combination of variables that brings about successful, sustainable collective action within the community itself. Existing research in public health lacks a conceptual road map for understanding how community based approaches towards revitalization in the midst of long standing poverty can be applied in a successful and sustained manner.  The Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) Framework provides a basis for community leaders to understand the general set of variables used to analyze the interconnected causes of multiple challenges.  This presentation takes the first steps towards showing how the IAD Framework could be applied in West Baltimore, where persistent poverty exists, so that as researchers in both pubic health and political economy we can provide a starting point from which diagnostic, analytical and prescriptive capabilities could emerge in order to further the understanding of the factors that bring about revitalized, sustainable communities.