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The EveryONE Project

Community Collaboration

As part of the AAFP's The EveryONE Project, we are forging partnerships with medical and non-medical organizations to lead positive community change, advocate for public policies that will support health equity, and identify new insights and evidence-based practices to help you address social determinants of health (SDOH).

Community Engagement for Health Equity

Health equity can come from engaging in partnerships to empower disadvantaged communities. Learn more about the following resources and forge your own partnerships within your communities.

Building a partnership – Practical Playbook® guides you through the collaboration process between primary care and public health.
Find your local health department – The National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) is a directory to help you search for local health departments in your area.
Community health assessment and improvement plans – Once you’ve learned about the collaboration process and located your local health department(s), reach out to them to learn how state and local health departments conduct community health assessments and community health improvement plans. Find out about how you can engage in this process and use this information to improve your patients’ health.

AAFP Partner Resources

The Community Preventive Services Taskforce

The AAFP has a longstanding relationship with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Community Preventive Services Taskforce (CPSTF), which produces the Guide to Community Preventive Services (The Community Guide). It is a collection of evidence-based findings about population-based strategies for improving health. The CPSTF recommendations are based on systematic reviews of the evidence, as well as an economic analysis.

The following resources can help family physicians select interventions to improve health and prevent disease at the state, community, or organization level.

Guide to Community Preventive Services (The Community Guide)
This online guide shows you what works to promote healthy communities.

CPSTF Health Equity Task Force Findings
Find out what the CPSTF’s findings are to improve health equity and their recommended interventions.

Prevention Institute

The AAFP forged a formal agreement with the Prevention Institute to explore opportunities for bringing more upstream social factor interventions (i.e., advocacy, policy change, and community empowerment issues) into the medical community. The Prevention Institute is the national center for developing and advancing the practice of primary prevention.

The following resources from the Prevention Institute can help family physicians when considering broader, population-based causes of health inequities.

Community-Centered Health Homes

The Community-Centered Health Home model outlines how health care systems can strategically support and engage in community prevention as they continue to deliver high-quality clinical services.

Measuring What Works to Achieve Health Equity: Metrics for the Determinants of Health – Prepared for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, this paper provides a framework for understanding how disparities in health outcomes occur, and how health equity can be achieved, particularly by addressing SDOH. It outlines a set of metrics that could result in progress toward achieving health equity.

Health Equity and Prevention Primer (HEPP)

A web-based training series, the Health Equity and Prevention Primer (HEPP) is intended for health providers and advocates interested in achieving health, safety, and health equity through policy advocacy, community change, and multi-sector engagement.

Moving from Understanding to Action on Health Equity: Social Determinants of Health Frameworks and THRIVE – The Office of Minority Health in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services commissioned the Prevention Institute to develop a community resilience assessment tool to capture the assets in a community to close the health gap. This paper provides and overview, purpose, and use of the Tool for Health and Resilience in Vulnerable Environments (THRIVE).

Practical Playbook®

In response to the 2012 Institute of Medicine (IoM) report, Primary Care and Public Health: Exploring Integration to Improve Population Health, the Practical Playbook® was developed to advance collaboration among public health, primary care, and other stakeholders to improve population health. It is hosted and administered by the Duke University School of Medicine’s Department of Community & Family Medicine Department.

The following resources show steps to take during a community health partnership and tell stories of past successful collaborations.

Building a partnership: Practical Playbook® guides you through the collaboration process between primary care and public health.

Success stories: Read about past success stories from Practical Playbook® to inspire your own community partnerships.