Mission of CCHD
In an environment of fragmented services, adversarial relationships, and increasingly scarce funding, community health development strategies have proven effective in overcoming the existing barriers to build community capacity for health improvement. Additional research is needed to more fully understand and develop which strategies are most effective in particular situations to build community capacity for population health improvement.
The Center's mission is: to develop relationships with rural communities and populations across the state, and through those relationships, to discover and disseminate ways to improve health status, particularly of low-income persons and the disadvantaged. The overall goal of CCHD is to stimulate research, education, program planning and implementation, dissemination, and evaluation as partners with communities for the ultimate purpose of improving population health status. Through existing and future relationships within the Texas A&M University System and various communities across the nation, CCHD will be able to capitalize on the resources and expertise of our partners.
Rural, minority, and low-income populations often face significant health disparities based on a host of factors. CCHD’s interdisciplinary research team has partnered with communities in Central Texas and South Texas to formally assess health in their communities, identify priorities, develop strategies to address their priorities, and evaluate the effectiveness of these strategies when implemented. These community-based projects have focused on a broad range of issues, including access to care, diabetes prevention and management, access to healthy food, breast cancer screening and treatment, affordable transportation to services, access to mental health services, childhood obesity, cancer survivorship, and health coverage options for employees of small businesses.
As part of our mission, CCHD extends training and technical assistance to individuals and organizations already engaged in community-based health programs and research. Drawing from the expertise and experience of our network of affiliated faculty members, the Center’s trainings have focused on topics such as logic modeling, evaluation, grant writing, funding diversity, community-based participatory research, network analysis, strategic planning, organizational development, and leadership development. In addition, CCHD is certified as a community health worker/promotora training center by the Texas Department of State Health Services. Through our projects, we have provided over 49,000 hours of training for 687 promotoras in Texas in topics such as diabetes management, mental health, breast cancer prevention, solid waste disposal, and immunizations.
To ensure that the lessons learned through our work is used to inform future researchers and practitioners, CCHD strives both to integrate projects into relevant masters and doctoral-level courses for students and to employ students whenever possible. Since 2001, the Center has provided hands-on experience in community based participatory approaches to research and practice to over 100 students through graduate assistantships and practicum opportunities. Over the past nine years, grants and contracts awarded to CCHD totaled just over $30 million and as a Center, our products include four books and 20 chapters, over 150 professional journal articles, and nearly 300 scientific or professional presentations.
