KU Work Group Home Page | Work Group for Community Health and Development

Image of Christina Holt and Stephen Fawcett at radio station KCUR in Kansas City.

Stephen Fawcett and Christina Holt speak with Steve Kraske about the Community Tool Box on KCUR’s "Up to Date." Listen.

KU WHO Collaborating Centre members Dr. Stephen Fawcett and Ithar Hassaballa join the launch group meeting in Brazzaville, the Republic of Congo, Africa. Read more.

A new benchmarks project funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation will provide a deeper understanding of milestones in the development of coalitions and other community health improvement efforts.

Image of Latino father and son playing baseball.

Latino Health for All launched Wyandotte Deserves, a co-sponsored awareness initiative with a simple message to promote health.

Strengthening the support system for individuals facing diabetes and food insecurity in this new Feeding America case study from Together on Diabetes.

We offer online documentation and evaluation services. Find out more.

The Latino Health for All Coalition and the Work Group were selected for a CDC REACH grant to promote health and health equity among Latinos in Wyandotte County, Kansas. More...

The KU Work Group and the Lawrence-Douglas County Health Department have launched an Academic Health Department, the first in Kansas and one of only a few in the country. More…

Our mission: supporting community health and development through collaborative research and evaluation, teaching and training, and technical support and capacity building.

Since 2004, the KU Work Group has been continually designated as a World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Community Health and Development.

Recent Highlights:

Action Tool Kit Launched in the Africa Region

A toolkit aimed at helping both health and non-health professionals to better address the root causes of what makes people sick or healthy has been launched by the World Health Organization (WHO) in the African Region. This toolkit drew on KU's Community Tool Box, a resource for community health that reached over 5.8 million unique users last year. More...

Identifying and Understanding Benchmarks of Success among Community Health Systems Improvement Initiatives

Funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, this project will provide a deeper understanding of milestones in the development of coalitions and other community health improvement efforts. With an extensive history of research and evaluation in this area, the KU Work Group is in a unique position to summarize the literature, and provide a systematic analysis of data from several hundred community health improvement initiatives spanning a 25-year history of supporting and evaluating community coalitions in the US and beyond. More ...

IOM Obesity Evaluation Toolkit

Stephen Fawcett and Christina Holt consulted with the Institute of Medicine on creation of an IOM Obesity Evaluation Toolkit that “mashes up” resources from the Community Tool Box to support implementation.

KU Work Group awarded CDC REACH grant

Hispanics are 1.7 times more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes compared to non‐Hispanic/Whites (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2014), and they are 2 to 4 times more likely to experience cardiovascular disease (Cusi & Ocampo, 2011).

The KU Work Group in partnership with the Latino Health for All Coalition has been awarded a CDC Reach Grant for a project titled, “Health for All: Healthy Places that Promote Health Equity among Latinos in Kansas City, KS.” This project seeks to promote healthy behaviors and reduce risk for disparities in chronic disease by creating or strengthening community spaces and places for Latinos to access healthy foods, opportunities for physical activity, and high-quality and culturally-appropriate services for chronic disease management. Project strategies include increasing access to healthy foods at restaurants, corner stores, concession stands and vending machines, as well as community design improvements that encourage walking, biking or running for physical activity. This project builds on a more than five-year history of collaborative work to assure conditions in which Latinos can be healthy in Wyandotte County. More…

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grants $250,000 for KU's Community Tool Box

Talk about timely. In 1995, when the Internet’s popularity was soaring, the University of Kansas Work Group for Community Health and Development launched the Community Tool Box website — a free resource to help communities at home and abroad improve health and development.

Since then, the Community Tool Box has burgeoned. The website now includes 7,000 pages of resource materials in English and in Spanish. In addition, the process of translating and culturally adapting the pages into Arabic is about half completed, and efforts are underway to translate all of the website into Portuguese, French, Chinese and Russian. More...

Work Group researcher wins early-career award

Jomella Watson-Thompson, assistant professor in applied behavioral science and associate director for the KU Work Group for Community Health and Development, has been selected as the recipient of the 2014 Ernest A. Lynton Award for the Scholarship of Engagement for Early Career Faculty.

The Lynton Award, given annually by the New England Resource Center for Higher Education, recognizes one pre-tenure or early-career faculty member who connects teaching, research, and service to community engagement. More...

KU Work Group engaged in national study of childhood obesity prevention programs

The KU Work Group serves as a scientific partner in the National Study of Childhood Obesity Prevention Programs. Funded by several NIH Institutes, CDC, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, this five-year study is examining what works in community-level efforts to prevent childhood obesity. More...

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