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Division of Chronic Disease > Healthy Maine Partnerships > Community Health Promotion Program > Getting Started

Getting Started

The first to the table brings along the rest!

  1. Talk to others ready to go beyond their own agenda to a larger vision.
  2. Explore the idea of developing a Healthy Communities initiative with others until you have a small group ready to take the next step. Let all the members of the group feel ownership of this process, so that no one person, organization, or sector of the community (i.e., health) is seen as driving the early agenda or “owning” the group. Make sure you include people who have or can learn community organizing skills, which are different from those of a manager or service provider.
  3. Contact other individual local Healthy Communities initiatives or the new State network of Healthy Communities. Invite a coordinator to present to your local group, request a visit to sit in on one of their meetings, and ask for samples of their literature. We encourage you to talk to several initiatives because each local initiative has its own unique history, structure, style of leadership and decision-making, funding, and current work focus.
  4. Obtain a Healthy Communities videotape loan from CHPP and show it to local groups at their meetings, or ask for copies of our generic Healthy Communities brochure.
  5. Conduct a series of roundtables using the Healthy Communities Dialogue Guide questions. Invite different people from different community sectors to the dialogue. It is an extraordinarily effective tool to get people talking and involved. You can get a copy of the Dialogue Guide and tips on effective outreach from CHPP or from community health Web sites.
  6. After a point in time where it’s clear that you want to pursue this further, why not attend the Bureau of Health’s Leadership Skills Series training on “Coalition Building,” and bring a team to its “Healthy Communities Overview” training!