ADVANCING COMMUNITY-HEALTH THROUGH COMMUNITY-HEALTH PARTNERSHIPS

Improving a community's health is a key goal of health services organi zations. Effectively pursuing that goal requires health services organ izations to create partnerships with other organizations to help ident ify community health needs and to create and carry out programs that b ring together community members and needed health services. Drawing on community systems concepts and a recent study of community health par tnership efforts in three cities, this article provides a framework fo r such partnerships. Types of partnerships described include: Communit y action partnerships, in which the partnership forms to address a spe cific problem or pursue a specific opportunity; Community organization partnerships, in which a set of organizations in a similar service se ctor agree to collaborate for mutually agreed upon goals; and Communit y development partnerships, in which a partnership attempts to increas e participation by people and organizations in collaborative activitie s that advance the community on multiple fronts or that contribute to community assets and services in multiple areas. The article also desc ribes how the pressures to create large integrated delivery systems ca n affect creation of partnerships to improve community health. Increas ingly, healthcare leaders are being held accountable for the health of communities they serve. When creating partnerships for community heal th and carrying out health-improvement activities, leaders should be a ware of and respond to four key dimensions of accountability: politica l accountability, commercial accountability, clinical/patient accounta bility, and community accountability.