This resource, Principles of Community Engagement offered by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - CDC/ATSDR Committee on Community Engagement, provides a guide for understanding the development of nine key principles of community engagement. The principles were created to guide community leaders and health professionals who are interested in involving communities in health issues.

The nine principles of community engagement will be valuable tools for readers interested in developing their own community engagement strategy. The key concepts used to create the principles were well argued and will be useful to anyone researching why community engagement is important, and how it should be applied.

This document also presents a list of success factors for community engagement. The factors include environmental, membership, process/structure, communication, purpose and resources.

This source also provides a definition of community engagement, developed from the work of Fawcett et al 1995.

“Community engagement is the process of working collaboratively with and through groups of people affiliated by geographic proximity, special interest, or similar situations to address issues affecting the well-being of those people.”

The last part of the document outlines eight examples of community engagement. Each case study describes their efforts to foster community engagement and how their example links to the nine principles of community engagement listed earlier in the document.

Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC/ATSDR Committee on Community Engagement. Principles of Community Engagement. Atlanta, Georgia: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 1997.

Full source available at: http://www.cdc.gov/phppo/pce/index.htm

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