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Communities Creating Health, presented in partnership with Creating Health Collaborative, is a series on how the design, implementation, and evaluation of interventions in health can align more closely with what communities value. #creatinghealth

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What Is Community Anyway? Our understanding of community can help funders and evaluators identify, understand, and strengthen the communities they work with.

By David M. Chavis & Kien Lee May 12, 2015

“Community” is so easy to say. The word itself connects us with each other. It describes an experience

so common that we never really take time to explain it. It seems so simple, so natural, and so human. In

the social sector, we often add it to the names of social innovations as a symbol of good intentions (for

example, community mental health, community policing, community-based philanthropy, community

economic development).

But the meaning of community is complex. And, unfortunately, insu�cient understanding of what a

community is and its role in the lives of people in diverse societies has led to the downfall of many well-

intended “community” e�orts.

Adding precision to our understanding of community can help funders and evaluators identify,

understand, and strengthen the communities they work with. There has been a great deal of research in

the social sciences about what a human community is (see for example, Chavis and Wandersman,

1990; Nesbit, 1953; Putnam, 2000). Here, we blend that research with our experience as evaluators and

implementers of community change initiatives.

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It’s about people.

First and foremost, community is not a place, a building, or an organization; nor is it an exchange of

information over the Internet. Community is both a feeling and a set of relationships among people.

People form and maintain communities to meet common needs.

Members of a community have a sense of trust, belonging, safety, and caring for each other. They have

an individual and collective sense that they can, as part of that community, in�uence their

environments and each other.

That treasured feeling of community comes from shared experiences and a sense of—not necessarily

the actual experience of—shared history. As a result, people know who is and isn’t part of their

community. This feeling is fundamental to human existence.

Neighborhoods, companies, schools, and places of faith are context and environments for these

communities, but they are not communities themselves.

People live in multiple communities.

Since meeting common needs is the driving force behind the formation of communities, most people

identify and participate in several of them, often based on neighborhood, nation, faith, politics, race or

ethnicity, age, gender, hobby, or sexual orientation.

Most of us participate in multiple communities within a given day. The residential neighborhood

remains especially important for single mothers, families living in poverty, and the elderly because their

sense of community and relationships to people living near them are the basis for the support they

need. But for many, community lies beyond. Technology and transportation have made community

possible in ways that were unimaginable just a few decades ago.

Communities are nested within each other.

Just like Russian Matryoshka dolls, communities often sit within other communities. For example, in a

neighborhood—a community in and of itself—there may be ethnic or racial communities, communities

based on people of di�erent ages and with di�erent needs, and communities based on common

economic interests.

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Just like Russian Matryoshka dolls, communities often sit within other communities. (Photo by Community

Science)

When a funder or evaluator looks at a neighborhood, they

often struggle with its boundaries, as if streets can bind

social relationships. Often they see a neighborhood as the

community, when, in fact, many communities are likely

to exist within it, and each likely extends well beyond the

physical boundaries of the neighborhood.

Communities have formal and informal institutions.

Communities form institutions—what we usually think of as large organizations and systems such as

schools, government, faith, law enforcement, or the nonpro�t sector—to more e�ectively ful�ll their

needs.

Equally important, however, are communities’ informal institutions, such as the social or cultural

networks of helpers and leaders (for example, council of elders, barbershops, rotating credit and savings

associations, gardening clubs). Lower-income and immigrant communities, in particular, rely heavily on

these informal institutions to help them make decisions, save money, solve family or intra-community

problems, and link to more-formal institutions.

Communities are organized in di�erent ways.

Every community is organized to meet its members’ needs, but they operate di�erently based on the

cultures, religions, and other experiences of their members. For example, while the African American

church is generally understood as playing an important role in promoting health education and social

justice for that community, not all faith institutions such as the mosque or Buddhist temple are

organized and operate in the same way.

Global migration has led to an assortment of communities based on people’s needs and desire for that

sense of trust, belonging, safety, and caring for each other. For example, one group of new immigrants

may form a community around its need to advocate for better treatment by law enforcement. Another

group may form a community around its need for spiritual guidance. The former may not look like a

community, as we imagine them, while the latter likely will.

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The meaning of community requires more thoughtfulness and deliberation than we typically give it.

Going forward, researchers, practitioners, and policymakers must embrace this complexity—including

the crucial impact communities have on health and well-being—as they strive to understand and create

social change.

David M. Chavis, Ph.D. (@chavispower) is the Principal Associate and CEO of Community Science and is

internationally recognized for his work in the implementation, support, and evaluation of community and systems

change initiatives. The primary focus of his work has been the relationship between community development and

the prevention of poverty, violence, substance abuse, and other social problems, as well as the design and implementation of

community capacity building systems.

Kien Lee, Ph.D, is the vice president and principal associate of Community Science where she specializes in issues

a�ecting communities that are racially, ethnically, or culturally diverse. She brings more than 15 years of research

and evaluation experience to this work, as well as expertise in the integration of immigrants, strategies, and

programming for racial equity, the reduction of health disparities, and the development of cross-culturally competent

organizations

Con�icts of interest: None declared

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