The Community Tool Box is a public service of the

University of Kansas The University of Kansas (KU) is a public research university with its main campus in Lawrence, Kansas, United States. Two branch campuses are in the Kansas City metropolitan area on the Kansas side: the university's medical school and hospital ...

Lawrence, Kansas Lawrence is a city in and the county seat of Douglas County, Kansas, United States, and the sixth-largest city in the state. It is in the northeastern sector of the state, astride Interstate 70 in Kansas, Interstate 70, between the Kansas River ...

, United States. It is maintained by the Work Group for Community Health and Development at the University of Kansas (formerly KU Work Group). The Community Tool Box is a free, online resource that contains thousands of pages of practical information for promoting community health and development, and is a global resource for anyone engaged in the work of community health and development.

History

The Community Tool Box was founded in 1995 by colleagues at the University of Kansas (including Stephen Fawcett, Jerry Schultz, and Vincent Francisco) in partnership with other national partners, including Bill Berkowitz and Tom Wolff. Phil Rabinowitz has been a major contributor to content for the Community Tool Box. The website was created by the Schiefelbusch Institute for Life Span Studies at the university. With over 7,000 pages of information, the Community Tool Box contains guides and aids for problem solving common barriers faced in

community development The United Nations defines community development as "a process where community members come together to take collective action and generate solutions to common problems." It is a broad concept, applied to the practices of civic leaders, activist ...

. In 2006, the website had a daily average of 3,315 visitors. It was initially an offline project which provided information to people about

substance abuse Substance misuse, also known as drug misuse or, in older vernacular, substance abuse, is the use of a drug in amounts or by methods that are harmful to the individual or others. It is a form of substance-related disorder, differing definition ...

and

gun A gun is a device that Propulsion, propels a projectile using pressure or explosive force. The projectiles are typically solid, but can also be pressurized liquid (e.g. in water guns or water cannon, cannons), or gas (e.g. light-gas gun). So ...

violence but later expanded to the Internet so that it could reach more people. The website serves as a resource for community improvement efforts, and has become widely used as text for courses in the following disciplines: public health, community health, social work,

community psychology Community psychology is concerned with the community as the unit of study. This contrasts with most psychology, which focuses on the individual. Community psychology also studies the community as a context for the individuals within it,Jim Orf ...

, and nursing. The development of the Community Tool Box has been supported by funds from the

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) is an American philanthropic organization. It is the largest one focused solely on health. Based in Princeton, New Jersey, the foundation focuses on access to health care, public health, health equity, ...

and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the

Kansas Health Foundation The Kansas Health Foundation (KHF) is a nonprofit organization based in Wichita, Kansas, U.S., but is statewide in its focus and grantmaking abilities. Its mission is to improve public health and wellness throughout Kansas. Through grantmaking, the ...

Site features and resources

With funding support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and with the support of a team of 75 translators around the world, the Community Tool Box is available in English and

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many countries in the Americas **Spanish cuisine **Spanish history **Spanish culture ...

. The resources of the Community Tool Box are organized in a

user-friendly Usability can be described as the capacity of a system to provide a condition for its users to perform the tasks safely, effectively, and efficiently while enjoying the experience. In software engineering, usability is the degree to which a softw ...

format. It contains a

table of contents A table of contents (or simply contents, abbreviated as TOC), is a list usually part of the Book design#Front matter, front matter preceding the main text of a book or other written work containing the titles of the text's sections, sometimes with ...

which links to 300 sections providing practical, step-by-step guidance in community-building skills. It also has forums and

chat room The term chat room, or chatroom (and sometimes group chat; abbreviated as GC), is primarily used to describe any form of synchronous conferencing, occasionally even asynchronous conferencing. The term can thus mean any technology, ranging from ...

s, which allow users to request assistance from the community.

Institutional Background

The Work Group for Community Health and Development is a research, teaching and public service organization which was established in 1975 and is based at the University of Kansas. The Work Group has been designated a

World Health Organization Collaborating Centre World Health Organization collaborating centres are institutions that work with the World Health Organization (WHO) in disciplines such as occupational health, food safety, and communicable disease prevention. There are over 700 such centres across ...

since 2004. Over the past three decades, the Work Group has researched, implemented, and evaluated community-based efforts to create environments that promote health and well-being.

References

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External links

Official website
(in English)
Official website
(in Spanish)
Community Tool Box on Facebook

Community Tool Box on Twitter
American health websites University of Kansas 1995 establishments in Kansas World Health Organization collaborating centres