Formalized Community Health Partnerships

The CCPH group would welcome the opportunity to formalize collaborations with interested county health offices or organizations.

The Public Health Foundation (www.phf.org) has developed guidelines to facilitate the establishment of formalized Academic Health Department (AHD) partnerships. An AHD partnership is established by the formal affiliation of a health department and an academic institution that trains future health professionals. This relationship is sometimes described as the public health equivalent of the “teaching hospital” affiliation found between hospitals and medical schools. AHD partnerships can enhance public health education and training, research, and service and may offer a variety of benefits, both for the organizations involved and for the community as a whole. 

AHD partnerships help to strengthen the links between public health practice and academia and to lessen the separation between the education of public health professionals and the practice of public health. AHDs can serve as sites for joint education, research, and practice, enabling the practice and academic communities to work together to develop the current and future public health workforce, build the evidence base for public health, and better deliver the Essential Public Health Services.

The CCPH group has created a draft templates to facilitate the creation of AHD's with county health partners. We have established the process with several counties and feel that the formalized agreements help to ensure mutual benefits and more effective collaboration. If you are interested, please email our team at CCPH@iastate.edu. We would welcome the chance to take that step with interested county health departments, extension offices or community health organizations.

Click here to learn more about this national initiative.