Improving health outcomes in Jefferson County through a Community Partnership School needs assessment.

Purpose

As FSU practitioners, researchers, and affiliated non-profit organization members we aim to partner with a rural community (Jefferson County). We plan to conduct needs assessments that are specifically tailored to the Jefferson County School community so we may assess not only what the needs are as the community sees them, but also to aid in the design of sustainable and effective interventions. We propose conducting a 4-phaseproject that will assist Jefferson County with forming a Community Partnership School(CPS). The four phases we propose are1) Initial preparation and collecting & analyzing quantitative data, 2) Overseeing of community engagement and FSU involvement, 3) Collecting and analyzing qualitative data, and 4) Piloting an intervention. We will end our one year of funding with piloting an intervention for the Jefferson County School community. Conducting this intervention should help to inform the future interventions we plan to coordinate and deliver after our year of Collaborative Collision fund send. We will first assess the needs of the community quantitatively through surveys and then qualitatively using Community based participatory research (CBPR) methods.

Key Terms

Community Partnerships Schools™(CPS): a model that involves forming of a long-term relationship between core partners, including a school district, a university or college, a community-based nonprofit, and a healthcare provider. Each partner is responsible for bringing different services and programming to the initiative with the goal of being able to provide a comprehensive set of supports and opportunities to promote whole child, family, and community well-being (Garcia & Blume, 2022).

Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR): a partnership approach to research that equitably involves community members, organizational representatives, and academic researchers in the research process. It enables partners to contribute their expertise, with shared responsibility and ownership, enhancing the understanding of a given phenomenon through those with lived experience. CBPR involves action to improve the health and well-being of community members through interventions and/or policy changes (Israel, Schulz, Parker, and Becker, 1998).

Proposed Methods 

Our team proposes to lead the initial CPS efforts by conducting the needs assessments forthe Jefferson County School communitythrough the following 4 phases.

Figure. 4 Project Phases and Key Steps

Rationale

Our reasons for choosing Jefferson County are three-fold a) it is a high needs community experiencing rural disadvantage in both education and healthcare, b)our team has made contact with the CPS steering committee and the Jefferson County principal and they are eager to partner with us, and c) this proposal is aptly timed as Jefferson County Schools was recently named one of six schools in Florida to receive a small, one-year grant to plan and begin developing a CPS, which, if successful in the first year, is eligible for more permanent funding. No specific plans are underway yet for initial activities to establish the CPS, per the CPS steering committee.

Community Partnership Schools involve forming long term partnerships across four entities: a school district, a college/university, a community-based nonprofit, and a health care provider. The purpose of these schools is to “leverage the social and institutional capital of the partners, making it possible for the school to offer resources and services that address the needs identified by a community” (UCF, n.d.). The following entities have signed on to partner with Jefferson County’s formation of a CPS: Children’s Home Society of Florida, North Florida College, Florida A&M University, Florida State University, Florida Department of Health, and the Florida Center for Reading Research.