A Conceptual Sustainability Strategy for a Rurally-Based Community Health Promotion Initiative

Anthony U Emekalam

doi:10.4172/2157-7420.1000e101

Abstract

Sustaining grant-funded rural community health promotion initiatives following expiration of active funding cycles is usually challenging. Rural communities are described as periphery to cities and somewhat isolated with all larger communities located more than 30 miles away and are perceived as lacking in essential resources that create and nurture businesses [1,2]. Statistics show that rural residents are comparatively poorer than urban and metropolitan residents. For instance in 2005, 17% of rural residents lived below poverty line whereas in metropolitan areas it was 13% [3]. Furthermore, as funding sources and grant making agencies limit, restrict, prioritize, and restructure funding because of current national economic downturn, it is imperative that rurally-based community healthcare promotion projects become familiar with a locally-dependent strategy that fosters sustenance of life-saving community health initiatives. This article describes a practical strategy for securing local resources to sustain rurally-based grant-funded community health promotion programs. It provides a step by step guide for identifying, recruiting, and engaging suitable local collaborators to secure resources that continue to meet goals and objectives of funded programs following expiration of external funding thereby ensuring that rural residents continue to receive benefits of useful health promotion initiatives. During these times of severe national economic hardship, program administrators will find this strategy very informative and helpful. However, there is need for further testing to properly evaluate the usefulness of this sustainability strategy.

Highlights

Community-based health promotion and preventive health care services are significant in addressing health disparities and expanding access to health care services in rural communities [4]
Over the years, such projects have been implemented in different community settings to address many health issues in rural communities because experts believe that they are very effective in delivering meaningful grass root health care services to rural populations [5]
Receiving adequate and meaningful heath care services can be a major challenge for rural residents due to several reasons including fewer doctors, nurses, dentists and other health care providers and facilities resulting in late diagnosis of serious chronic diseases and poorer health outcomes

Summary

Introduction

Community-based health promotion and preventive health care services are significant in addressing health disparities and expanding access to health care services in rural communities [4]. The underlying concepts of this strategy is articulation and integration of published sustainability concepts of capacity building and institutionalization interfaced with economic dynamics of typical rural communities woven into a practical, stepwise, and easy to follow protocol [34,27] It is designed under the key proposition that communities are usually supported by local economies consisting of networks of businesses and social organizations that guarantee their continued existence. It highlights program goals, goals-tending activities (strategies), needed activities-supporting resources and targeted support-providing local collaborators. Evidences of prior or current supports or sponsorships of charitable initiatives in resident communities are good indicators To streamline this process, it is very helpful to create a template that lists all local businesses and organization and using these identifiers to highlight those with better collaborative potentials (Table 1). These ice breaker support-requests must be so affordable and extremely easy to implement that it will make no sense for potential

Unlikely

Conclusion