Community Organization Influence on Local Public Health Care Policy: A General Research Model and Comparative Case Study

The community organization literature consists mainly of case descriptions and analyses, on the one hand, and integrative works that prescribe or classify community organization methods or attempt to develop more theoretical models. There is a need for an intermediate level of empirical research that will generate comparable data on several cases, analyze factors that influence community organization, test hy potheses, and help develop an empirically grounded and more rigorous community organization theory. This article presents a research model developed to study community organization influence on local public health care policy. The model is applied in a comparative case study of such community organization experiences in seven California counties. Findings from the study are prsented and analyzed, and several factors are identified that were important in the success or failure of these community organization efforts.

社区组织方面的文献一方面主要包括案例描述和分析，另一方面包括一些综合性著作，这些著作规定或分类了社区组织方法，或者试图建立更多的理论模型。我们需要一种中等水平的实证研究，它能够产生关于若干案例的可比数据，分析影响社区组织的因素，检验假设，并有助于建立一种基于实证且更严谨的社区组织理论。本文提出了一个研究模型，用于研究社区组织对当地公共卫生保健政策的影响。该模型应用于对加利福尼亚州七个县的此类社区组织经验的比较案例研究。文中呈现并分析了研究结果，并确定了几个对这些社区组织工作的成败至关重要的因素。