Health Administration (HADM) 315

Overview

In HADM 315: Health and Community Development, you are invited to engage in the content and discussions with online peers and community partners so that you will experience theory and practice combined as praxis. You will learn about concepts of community, social determinants of health, and the use of participatory action research methods in the application and integration of community development (CD) principles to build community capacity.

We will provide you with tools to facilitate community organizing and participatory action (PA) as a means of bringing people together to address problematic social conditions. As a purposeful collective effort, PA requires sound analytical, political, and interactional skills. An important aspect of those skills for community facilitators involves a continuous pattern of systematic planning, doing, reflecting again (theorizing), and acting strategically to build a group or community that can achieve its aims.

Although these concepts are addressed in the course, we assume learners come with some familiarity of such relevant skills and knowledge as: the nature of organizations, service delivery networks, community structures and dynamics, power structure and dynamics, empowerment, and advocacy. Through learning from case studies presented by community partners and the values they express, you will have opportunities to develop the skills and competencies required of effective community development practitioners, and increase your capacity to create sustainable transformative change. Therefore, this course is relevant to direct practice for and with any community or group, but it is particularly relevant for advocacy and capacity building for disempowered groups in society.

Outline

Health Administration 315: Health and Community Development comprises eight units, which are further divided into segments, as outlined below.

Unit One: Introduction to Health and Community Development

Segment 1: Guiding Your Learning Journey – As the Eagle Flies
Segment 2: Case Study: You just blink and it can happen: A study of women’s homelessness north of 60
Segment 3: Professionalization, Service Delivery, and Community Development
Segment 4: Where Theory Meets Practice

Unit Two: What is Community Development?

Segment 1: What is Community?
Segment 2: Systems Thinking Applied to Community Development
Segment 3: What is the "Development" in Community Development?

Unit Three: Mapping Community Development

Segment 1: Concepts and Tools Used In Community Development
Segment 2: The Medicine Wheel as a Situation Mapping Tool
Segment 3: The Determinants Model and Problem Tree Analysis

Unit Four: How Change Happens

Segment 1: Three Kinds of Change Problems
Segment 2: Why Community Development is Always about Change
Segment 3: Routine Change versus Transformation

Unit Five: Doing Things Right – Best Practices and Principles to Guide Development Action (Part I, Principles 1 – 8)
Segment 1: Introduction to the Principles of Community Development

• Human beings can transform their world
• Development comes from within
• Healing is a necessary part of development
• Justice
• No vision, no development
• Development processes must be rooted in the culture of the people
• Interconnectedness: A holistic approach
• The hurt of one is the hurt of all; the honour of one is the honour of all

Unit Six: Doing Things Right – More Best Practices and Principles to Guide Development Action (Part II, Principles 9 – 17)
Segment 1: Introduction to More Principles of Community Development

• Unity
• Participation
• Spirit
• Morals and ethics
• Learning
• Sustainability
• Move to the positive
• Be the change you want to see
• Power and power dynamics in the community must be acknowledged and analysed

Unit Seven: Are you an Effective Community Development Facilitator?

Segment 1: Roles and Personal Characteristics of Effective Community Development Workers
Segment 2: Strategies for Community Development Work
Segment 3: Capacity Building as the Foundation of Community Development Work
Segment 4: Assessing Community Capacity
Segment 5: Capacity Building Strategies and Tools

Unit Eight: Community Development Practice

Segment 1: Participation
Segment 2: Barriers to Participation Produce Inauthentic Participation
Segment 3: Participatory Action Research
Segment 4: Components and Core Competencies to Facilitate Sustained Participatory Action

Evaluation

To receive credit for HADM 315, you must complete all assessments and achieve a course composite grade of at least D (50 percent). The weighting of the composite grade is as follows:

Activity	Weight
Assignment 1: Defining and Describing Community	20%
Assignment 2: Community Assessment	30%
Assignment 3: Developing and Implementing an Action Plan	35%
Participation	15%
Total	100%

To learn more about assignments and examinations, please refer to Athabasca University’s online Calendar.

Materials

This course either does not have a course package or the textbooks are open-source material and available to students at no cost. This course has a Course Administration and Technology Fee, but students are not charged the Course Materials Fee.

Alternate Delivery Option (OERu*)

HADM315: Health and Community Development (Revision 4), is now offering a version of this course in Open Courseware format. This means that anyone interested in learning more about health and community development, but not desiring university credits for their learning, has free access to audit the course as a “guest” without tutor support or assignment submissions.”

*The OERu is an independent, not-for-profit network that offers free online university courses for students worldwide using Open Educational Resources (OER)

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