Systems change as an outcome and a process in the work of community collaboratives for health

Abstract

The widespread development of comprehensive community initiatives that aim to improve community health is driven by the need to change the systems charged with delivering the services and creating the policies related to a variety of health outcomes. Georgia's Family Connection initiative is the nation's largest statewide network of community collaboratives for health, with collaboratives operating in 159 counties. Data on community context, collaborative processes, engagement in systems change, and changes in programs and activities implemented, gathered consistently at the collaborative level over 3 years, will be used to answer the following questions. How do community contexts and the structure and processes of collaboratives affect implementation of systems change? How do systems changes affect intermediate outcomes such as the type of programs offered in a community? Longitudinal change in systems change and program implementation is described and significant predictors of between-collaborative variation in longitudinal change for each outcome are identified.