Determining the Effectiveness of Creating a Public Health Advisory Council to Address Public Health Issues Affecting a Region in N

Background: The need to address public health needs specific to a region in New Hampshire was well documented in the 2015 County Health Rankings. Individual healthcare professionals and town officials, as well as community members perceived priorities differently and reduced state funding diminished opportunities to address community health needs on a regional level. Objective: The state of New Hampshire provided funding for only two efforts that were required for the CHIP to be in alignment with state mandates. In an effort to better and more equally distribute limited resources, each CHIP would be implemented by a regional Public Health Advisory Council serving all or parts of multiple counties in their regions rather than any single community. A case study design using Community-Based Participatory Action Research (CB-PAR) was selected in order to evaluate the Community Health Improvement Plan proposed by the state of New Hampshire. Methods: Using typical generic CB-PAR methodology due to the predominantly qualitative nature of the study, a case study design was appropriate. Data was collected and cataloged during monthly meetings of the CHIP. Results: It was observed that the CHIP was able to implement interventions addressing five priority areas determined by the participants and extrapolated from the Community Health Needs Assessments noted by the group over the year of observation as well as noting positive results from regular meeting, networking and discussion that this project was able to produce despite limited resources. Recommendations: CB-PAR is a good design for use in larger regional public health efforts as it demonstrated reasonable success developing a productive and collaborative group despite limited funding. The CHIP was not able to maintain a consistent representation of participants from each community in the region. It would be beneficial to consider the effectiveness of the effort with a full compliment of local partnership representing each community in the region.