Community Organizing and Community Building for Health and Welfare

MEREDITH MINKLER, DrPH, MPH, is a professor of health and behavior at the School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, and the founding director of the university’s Center on Aging. She is the coauthor or editor of numerous books, including Community-Based Participatory Research: From Processes to Outcomes (with Nina Wallerstein).

The third edition offers new and more established ways to approach community building and organizing, from collaborating with communities on assessment and issue selection to using the power of social media to enhance the effectiveness of such work. Numerous case studies ranging from childhood obesity to immigrant worker rights to health care reform are provided as well as a “tool kit” of appendixes that includes guidelines for assessing coalition effectiveness, exercises for critical reflection on power and privilege, and such training tools as “policy bingo.”

List of Illustrations AcknowledgmentsPART ONEIntroduction 1. Introduction to Community Organizing and Community Building 2. Why Organize? Problems and Promise in the Inner CityPART TWOContextual Frameworks and Approaches 3. Improving Health through Community Organization and Community Building 4. Contrasting Organizing Approaches 5. Community Building PracticePART THREEBuilding Effective Partnerships and Anticipating and Addressing Ethical Challenges 6. Community, Community Development, and the Forming of Authentic Partnerships 7. Ethical Issues in Community Organizing and Capacity Building 8. Building Partnerships between Local Health Departments and CommunitiesPART FOURCommunity Assessment and Issue Selection 9. Community Health Assessment or Healthy Community Assessment 10. Mapping Community Capacity 11. Selecting and “Cutting” the IssuePART FIVECommunity Organizing and Community Building within and across Diverse Groups and Cultures 12. Education, Participation, and Capacity Building in Community Organizing with Women of Color 13. African American Barbershops and Beauty Salons 14. Popular Education, Participatory Research, and Community Organizing with Immigrant Restaurant Workers in San Francisco’s ChinatownPART SIXUsing the Arts and the Internet as Tools for Community Organizing and Community Building 15. Creating an Online Strategy to Enhance Effective Community Building and Organizing 16. Using the Arts and New Media in Community Organizing and Community BuildingPART SEVENBuilding, Maintaining, and Evaluating Effective Coalitions and Community Organizing Efforts 17. A Coalition Model for Community Action 18. Community Organizing for Obesity Prevention in Humboldt Park, Chicago 19. Participatory Approaches to Evaluating Community Organizing and Coalition BuildingPART EIGHTInfluencing Policy through Community Organizing and Media Advocacy 20. Using Community Organizing and Community Building to Influence Public Policy 21. Organizing for Health Care Reform 22. Media AdvocacyAppendixes 1. Principles of Community Building 2. Action-Oriented Community Diagnosis Procedure 3. Challenging Ourselves 4. A Ladder of Community Participation in Public Health 5. Coalition Member Assessment 6. Community Mapping and Digital Technology 7. Using Force Field and “SWOT” Analysis as Strategic Tools in Community Organizing 8. A Checklist for Action 9. Criteria for Creating Triggers or Codes for Freirian Organizing 10. Scale for Measuring Perceptions of Control at the Individual, Organizational, Neighborhood, and beyond-the-Neighborhood Levels 11. Policy Bingo About the Contributors Index