The definition of health in a given community may further define the
enterprise of community health and how community health is put into action (e.g., Ivacaftor in vitro the methods, measures, process, and outcomes used for implementing a community health effort in a given setting). The third area – interventions – encompasses the scope of the intervention(s) being delivered within the community, and reflects the input, needs, perspectives, and goals of communities as they work to improve their health. This may include interventions such as creating safe and healthful environments; ensuring health equity for all members of the community (Centers for Disease Control, Prevention — Division of Community Health, 2013); implementing programs to promote health and to prevent disease and injury;
and fostering linkages between community and clinical programs and other resources to support health (Bauer UE et al., 2014). The final area – the “science of community health” – encompasses the methods that are SB203580 mw used by the field to develop and evaluate the evidence base that underlies the conception, design, implementation, evaluation, and dissemination of interventions. Community health draws upon a multitude of applied and theoretical public health, medical, and other scientific disciplines in terms of methods (e.g., surveillance and surveillance systems [such as the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System and Youth Risk Behavioral System], epidemiology, evaluation), and expertise (e.g., prevention effectiveness, health economics, anthropology, demography, policy, health education, behavioral sciences, STK38 and law). However, the evidence base for community health may be inherently limited because of the absence of consensus, or even general agreement, on the definition and scope of a target “community”. Because of the complexity of working in communities, the “clean” scientific
methods used in experimental design often are not relevant and cannot be directly applied. Thus, one of the greatest challenges also represents an opportunity for the field of “community health” to develop innovative methods that account for the complexity of communities, variability in how health in communities is defined, and how evidence can be generated that reflects the reality of the communities in which people live, work, and play. In their assessment of what had been learned about contributions of community-based interventions to public health, Merzel and D’Afflitti suggested several other factors that help to explain the lack, or limited strong effect, of such programs, including methodological challenges to study design and evaluation, concurrent secular trends, smaller-than-expected effect sizes, limitations of the interventions, and limitations of theories used (Merzel and D’Afflitti, 2003).