Identifying and Defining the Dimensions of Community Capacity to Provide a Basis for Measurement

Although community capacity is a central concern of community development experts, the concept requires clarification. Because of the potential importance of community capacity to health promotion, the Division of Chronic Disease Control and Community Intervention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), convened a symposium in December 1995 with the hope that a consensus might emerge regarding the dimensions that are integral to community capacity. This article describes the dimensions that the symposium participants suggested as central to the construct, including participation and leadership, skills, resources, social and interorganizational networks, sense of community, understanding of community history, community power, community values, and critical reflection. The dimensions are not exhaustive but may serve as a point of departure to extend and refine the construct and to operationalize ways to assess capacity in communities.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/67070/2/10.1177_109019819802500303.pd

Behavioral science, social science, and public health in the 21st century

This chapter attempts to show why and how the behavioral and social sciences are making major contributions to our understanding and solving the important public health problems confronting us as we enter the new millennium. During the 1st half of the 20th century, the occurrence of many infectious diseases declined in the US, and chronic diseases replaced them as the leading causes of mortality. Most of these chronic diseases appear to be multiply determined and involve lifestyle risk factors that have major behavioral, psychosocial, and sociocultural contributions. Thus, to understand almost all major causes of mortality in the US, it is necessary to study the behavioral, psychosocial, and sociocultural variables that contribute to these deaths. The control over most causes of morbidity and mortality involves the use of behavioral-social sciences interventions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved

Practical solutions to challenges in research ethics proceedings of Bangalore conference

On November 3 rd and 4 th , 2012, Manipal Hospital, Bangalore and Association for the Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs co-hosted a regional conference titled "Practical Solutions to Challenges in Research Ethics." This paper is a synthesis of the major themes of the conference. The authors discuss the current state of the clinical research in India today, need to focus on human research protection programs rather than Ethics Committees or institutional review boards, the factors that influence high-quality research and some practical solutions to improving the quality of research and the protection of research participants

Integrating behavioral and social sciences with public health

This book examines the ways that behavioral and social sciences have been applied to major public health concerns. With the community-based approach, behavioral and social sciences have been increasingly integrated into public health, demonstrating that they can contribute to understanding the role of risk behaviors and risk-group characteristics for health promotion and disease control and prevention. The authors of this book provide a showcase of successful examples of integrating behavioral and social sciences with public health, and they challenge public health specialists and behavioral and social scientists to meld their work in more effective ways. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved