TRANSLATING PUBLIC-HEALTH RESEARCH INTO PUBLIC-HEALTH PRACTICE - OUTCOMES AND CHARACTERISTICS OF SUCCESSFUL COLLABORATIONS

For over five years we have been involved in a series of collaboration s between academic public health and state and local public health org anizations. This article briefly describes the outcomes produced and u nder development by these collaborations and delineates and discusses some characteristics we now hypothesize will predict successful academ ic/practice collaboration. These collaborative projects with public he alth organizations in Alabama, Indiana, and New Mexico have produced o utcomes that influenced the organization of the agencies and the alloc ation of resources within the agencies. The collaborations also have c ontributed to the body of literature concerning management processes i n public health agencies and influenced the teaching of strategic mana gement to students of health services. Our experiences and interaction s led to the identification of 10 characteristics we believe predict s uccessful academic and practice collaborations, discussed in three gro ups as (1) characteristics of successful academic collaborators, (2) c haracteristics of successful collaborating public health organizations , and (3) characteristics of successful collaborative projects.