Chapter 6. Part 2. The Role of Social Networks in Community Engagement

What to know

Obtaining knowledge about social networks and gathering knowledge from such networks are essential to the development of relevant strategies for health improvement. Understanding a community's social networks is essential because of their potential to affect population health.

community engagement header

Chapter Overview

  • Know the community
  • Establish strategies
  • Build networks, and
  • Mobilize communities

Chapter 6 uses these four elements to describe the role and importance of social networks in community engagement.

  • Cultures and institutions
  • Its capabilities and assets
  • Its health needs and challenges

Learning about a Community Requires the Following Approaches:

  • Gathering existing data
  • Generating new information
  • Combining qualitative and quantitative data
  • Incorporating the perspectives of individuals, organizations, and groups

  • Evaluate community engagement
  • Describe the diversity of networks
  • Visualize and quantify the network characteristics of a network

SNA can help partners understand a community's networks and track how they grow and change over time. This methodology is discussed further in Chapter 7.

  • Engage social networks for feedback and priorities
  • Establish positions on issues and approaches
  • Plan strategies for intervention
  • Use social networks as means of communication

  • Establish communication channels
  • Exchange resources
  • Coordinate collaborative activities
  • Utilize existing social networks for community engagement

  • Mobilizes partners and constituencies for action to improves community health,
  • Sustains leadership, communication, and motivation.
  • Strengthens relationships and develops new capacity for collective action.
  • Pulls in key opinion leaders and community stakeholders.

Tips from the Literature‎

In one example of how this can work, a clinician-researcher at the University of California, Davis, used social networks to help reduce dog bites among children. After noticing that a large number of children were being seen for treatment of dog bites, the investigator identified social networks such as dog owners, school crossing guards, and neighborhood associations and engaged them in understanding the problem, defining workable solutions, and mobilizing the community to put these solutions into action (Pan et al., 2005).

References

Hatcher MT, Nicola RM. Building constituencies for public health. In: Novick LF, Morrow CB, Mays GP (editors). Public health administration: principles for population-based management (2nd ed., pp. 443-458). Sudbury (MA): Jones and Bartlett; 2008.

Pan RJ, Littlefield D, Valladolid SG, Tapping PJ, West DC. Building healthier communities for children and families: applying asset-based community development to community pediatrics. Pediatrics 2005;115(4 Suppl):1185-1187.

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Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry