Getting toHealthy People 2010: Creativity in Community Health
The 20th century brought remarkable and unprecedented improvements in health care, and the national initiative Healthy People 2010 and the related Healthy People in Healthy Communities1 cite strategies for providers, educators, planners, and researchers to make significant improvements in community-based health care over the next 8 years. The success of Healthy People will depend both on encouraging community health educators, providers, program planners, and researchers to develop and test initiatives that increase access to high-quality community-based health care and on providing individuals with the knowledge, motivation, and skills to improve their own health status.
To achieve the global objectives of Healthy People, there is general agreement that future services must be built on more accurate and dependable community-wide assessments, include a greater focus on the health needs of special populations, and utilize interdisciplinary communication and collaboration networks more efficiently as an important means of offsetting service provider shortages in underserved and high-need communities. The eight articles in this issue of Family & Community Health are examples of creative efforts to achieve these goals.
The article Assessing Assets in Racially Diverse, Inner-City Youths: Psychometric Properties of the Search Institute Asset Questionnaire is an example of a frequently neglected aspect of community-based assessment: the importance of regularly exploring the reliability and validity of community assessment measures for the changing profile of community-based populations in the future. Both Assessment of a Pilot Video's Effect on Physical Activity and Heart Health for Young Children and Assessing the Effectiveness of a Community-Based Media Campaign Targeting Physical Inactivity demonstrate the importance of the community-based media campaign to educate special and high-risk populations. Telehealth for Elders and Their Caregivers in Rural Communities, a review of distance education and service programs across the nation, demonstrates how much community-based media have changed over time.
Three articles remind the reader that interdisciplinary care in the community is a possible, practical necessity: Faith Community Nursing: Parish Nursing/Health Ministry Collaboration Model in Central Texas, MDON: A Network of Community Partnerships, and A Community-Based Free Nursing Clinic's Approach to Management of Health Problems for the Uninsured: The Hepatitis C Example. Finally, Wellness General of the United States: A Creative Approach to Promote Family and Community Health invites us to rethink the current structure of the U.S. health care system for its continued viability in the 21st century. These articles illustrate the variety of creative programs and policies needed to meet the Healthy People goals in the next 8 short years.
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