Collaboration

Collaboration is a way for organizations to move beyond their own capacity to deal with a larger issue. Collaboration has the potential to bring members’ unique resources or talents together for the benefit of all involved. It helps us identify areas of need beyond our own scope and accomplish tasks that may otherwise take more time then we are able to invest. Since much of what we do in childhood injury prevention is community-based or population-specific, collaboration helps us make sure that our needs are being met. By collaborating, organizations can use the combined range of skills and resources to find a solution. Collaboration also helps sustain programs by reducing costs involved in program planning, research, training, and outreach.

->Program Collaborations
->Evaluating Collaborations

Program Collaborations

For more information on program collaborations, please refer to:

• Broadening Participation in Community Problem Solving: a Multidisciplinary Model to Support Collaborative Practice and Research, Center for the Advancement of Collaborative Strategies in Health
  This paper presents a multidisciplinary process to develop more effective community problem solving and to improve community health.
• Collaboration: What Makes It Work, Amherst H. Wilder Foundation
  This book is a review of research literature on factors influencing successful collaboration.
• Creating and Maintaining a Coalition or Partnership, The Community Tool Box
  This section of the Community Tool Box website provides a detailed outline for creating and maintaining a coalition or partnership.
• Engaging the Community in Decision Making: Case Studies Tracking Participation, Voice and Influence, McFarland and Company, Inc.
  This book discusses the concept of influence inequities resulting from a participation process, and provides readers with practical, evidence-based tools to help community members overcome influence inequities.
• Medicine and Public Health: The Power of Collaboration, Center for the Advancement of Collaborative Strategies in Health
  This monograph provides readers with a practical framework for understanding and implementing collaborative strategies among medical and public health practitioners.
• Multicultural Collaboration, The Community Tool Box
  This section of the Community Tool Box website addresses the challenges of overcoming the communication barriers of different cultures, ethnic heritage, values, traditions, language, history, sense of self, and racial attitudes by focusing on a common goal and equal power for all involved.
• National Collaborating Centre for Methods and Tools
  The National Collaborating Centre for Methods and Tools (NCCMT) focuses on improving access to, and use of, evidence-based methods and tools for stakeholders involved in policy making, program decision making, practice, and research in Canada.
• Partnerships and Collaboration Building Toolkit, Santa Clara County Department of Public Health
  This toolkit provides strategies for building partnerships with first responders, including law enforcement, police, fire and the medical community based on the Santa Clara County Public Health collaborative model, the Countywide Medical Response System (CMRS).
• Public Health Infrastructure Research, NACCHO
  This section of the NACCHO website provides information on the Profile of Local Health Departments study series, which includes information on a range of public health infrastructure topics from every local health department in the U.S.
• Strategic Alliances Among Health and Human Services Organizations: From Affiliations to Consolidations, Sage Publications, Inc
  This book examines the formation and maintenance of strategic alliances: from the motives that lead organizations to form relationships, to practical tips on how to sustain, recreate, and end partnerships.
• Working Together for Healthier Communities: A Framework for Collaboration Among Community Partnerships, Support Organizations, and Funders, The Community Tool Box
  This section of the Community Tool Box website outlines how community partnerships, support and intermediary organizations, and grantmakers can work together to build the capacity of community members to address what matters to them.

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Evaluating Collaborations

For more information on evaluating collaborations, please refer to:

• Evaluating the Imperative of Intraorganizational Collaboration, American Journal of Evaluation
  This article discusses a multistage collaboration evaluation process to assess interpersonal collaboration.
• Measuring Collaboration Among Grant Partners, American Journal of Evaluation
  This article introduces the "Levels of Collaboration Scale" as a way to reduce evaluator’s difficulty in assessing collaboration among grant partners.
• Partnership Self-Assessment Tool, Center for the Advancement of Collaborative Strategies
  This assessment tool is intended to help partnerships understand how collaboration works, how to assess your collaborative processes, and how to identify specific areas to make your processes better.
• Participatory Evaluation Model for Coalitions: The Development of Systems Indicators, Health Promotion Practice
  This article presents the evolution of a comprehensive participatory coalition evaluation model and a workbook that emerged from a 6-year Healthier Communities initiative in New Mexico.
• Partnership Synergy: A Practical Framework for Studying and Strengthening the Collaborative Advantage, The Milbank Quarterly [pdf, 119KB*]
  This article provides a practical framework for operationalizing and assessing partnership synergy.
• Utilizing Collaboration Theory to Evaluate Strategic Alliances, American Journal of Evaluation
  This article introduces the Strategic Alliance Formative Assessment Rubric (SAFAR), and demonstrates its use in evaluating the Safe School/Healthy Student Initiatives.

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