Chapter 4. Part 1. The Frameworks

Principles provides nine guiding principles for organizations to apply when working with community partners. These principles give organizational leaders a framework for shaping their own

• culture,
• planning engagement,
• conducting outreach, and
• interacting with communities.

However, principles by themselves do not offer an engagement model or process for their application. The principles are certainly compatible with existing community mobilization processes. Compatibility per se is not enough. To date, there hasn't been clear guidance on how to

• organizationally or operationally support the use of these nine principles or,
• the array of community mobilization models.

As noted in Chapter 1, Butterfoss et al. articulated CCAT on the basis of research on the collaborative engagements of coalitions. In laying out CCAT, they provided 21 practice-based propositions that address processes ranging from the formation of coalitions through institutionalization. CCAT does not identify the structural capacity and management support required to facilitate and guide the processes it recommends.

CCAT occupies a unique and important role because it ties community engagement to theory. In fact, it is a particularly appropriate theoretical framework. CCAT developers are interested in what Butterfoss (2007) describes as "formal, multipurpose, and long-term alliances."

CCAT and community engagement have a common focus on long-term relationships. The CCAT framework offers propositions that are clearly relevant for undertaking and sustaining collaborative processes for community engagement. Additionally, CCAT addresses the full range of processes from initiation of new collaborative activities to institutionalization of mature relationships. Finally, CCAT propositions supports the nine principles of community engagement.

The constituency development framework is drawn from the organizational practice of constituency development. This is the process of developing relationships with community members who benefit from or have influence over community public health actions. Constituency development involves four practice elements (Hatcher et al., 2008)

• Know the community, its constituents, and its capabilities.
• Establish positions and strategies that guide interactions with constituents.
• Build and sustain formal and informal networks to maintain relationships, communicate messages, and leverage resources.
• Mobilize communities and constituencies for decision making and social action.

This framework provides a parsimonious set of tasks that must be undertaken for community engagement. How can these tasks be carried out in accordance with the principles of community engagement and CCAT?

To specify the capacity required to support this effort, we use Handler and colleagues' (2001) categories of structural capacity. This include five kinds of resources: human, informational, organizational, physical, and fiscal. In Public Health: What It Is and How It Works, Turnock elaborates on these as they apply to health systems (2009)

• Human resources include competencies such as leadership, management, community health, intervention design, and disciplinary sciences.
• Information resources span data and scientific knowledge, including demographic and socioeconomic data, data on health risks and health status, behavioral data, data on infrastructure and services.
• Organizational resources include organizational units and missions; administrative, management, and service-delivery structures; coordinating structures; communication channels and networks; regulatory or policy guidance; and organizational and professional practices and processes.
• Physical resources are the work spaces and places, hardware, supplies, materials, and tools used to conduct business.
• Fiscal resources include the money used to perform within an enterprise area and the perceived economic values. Examples include leveraging partner resources, development of community services and increases in social capital.