Despite this long history of community health programs, approaches to defining the meaning and scope of community health, as available in the peer review and pedagogical literature, are limited in number. Previous efforts to define “community health” were developed primarily for academically-centered texts and other information sources. These definitions largely have not been positioned to frame the expanding field of community health in public health practice and the importance of community engagement. For example, in their 1999 text on community and population health, Green and Ottoson defined community

health as referring to “… the health status of a community and

to the organized responsibilities see more of public health, school health, transportation safety, and other tax-supported functions, with voluntary and private actions, to promote and protect the health Selleckchem PD0325901 of local populations identified as communities.” A community was defined as “a group of inhabitants living in a somewhat localized area under the same general regulations and having common norms, values, and organizations” (Green and Ottoson, 1999). In their 2005 text, McKenzie and colleagues offered this definition: “Community Health refers to the health status of a defined group of people and the actions and conditions, both private and public (governmental), to promote,

protect, and preserve their health” (McKenzie et al., 2005). In general, Fossariinae earlier programs and academic descriptions tended to frame communities as mutually exclusive and as having minimal within-community variation. Although this approach may be useful in simplifying study design and program implementation, it typically does not reflect the reality of the situation. The term “community health” also appears in the titles of units and programs in a small number of state and federal public health agencies, academic programs, and other settings, such as health care systems. But for these, too, the meaning of community health is not readily apparent through publicly-available mission statements or other information sources. For example, in Georgia, the state-level executive branch agency responsible for health is the Georgia Department of Community Health which specifies that its mission is to provide Georgians with “… access to affordable, quality health care through effective planning, purchasing and oversight” (Georgia Department of Community Health). The Michigan Department of Community Health’s mission is to “… protect, preserve, and promote the health and safety of the people of Michigan with particular attention to providing for the needs of vulnerable and under-served populations” (Michigan Department of Community Health).