KU Center for Community Health and Development

The Center for Community Health and Development (formerly the KU Work Group) has developed widely used capabilities for community-based participatory research and for building capacity for community work, including through the Community Tool Box and the Community Check Box. Recognition of these capabilities led to official designation in 2004 as a World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Community Health and Development.

The Center for Community Health and Development is affiliated with the Department of Applied Behavioral Science and the Schiefelbusch Institute for Life Span Studies at the University of Kansas. Since 1975, generations of Ph.D.-level researchers, graduate and undergraduate students, and professional staff have carried on, and found meaning in, this effort.

Why the Center for Community Health and Development?

Throughout the world, people are working together to build healthier communities. They join in common purpose to promote community and public health, child and youth development, and community development. Locally, nationally, and globally, we are working together to understand and transform the conditions that matter to people.

Community work requires understanding. Through its research, the Center helps address key questions related to the science and practice of promoting community health and development:

What aspects of collaborative action accelerate changes in communities and systems?
Under what conditions are these changes in community programs and policies associated with improvement in community-level outcomes in health and development?
Community work needs support. Through technical assistance and consultation, our team assists organizations and funders with core activities. These include community assessment, strategic and action planning, documenting and evaluating the work, and using information to make adjustments, assure accountability, and tell the group's story.

Community work demands capacity. We help build capabilities through training, technical assistance, and online support for being able to do the work and sustain it long enough to make a difference.

Social justice demands environments that help assure health and development for all of us. In our research, we seek understanding of how communities can be effective in addressing issues that matter. In our teaching and service, we share this knowledge with generations of community practitioners and students. Working together, we hope to learn and make a difference.