Volume 11, No. 1
Articles
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Toward the future: A conceptual review and call for research and action with online communities
The internet allows people to connect with virtually anyone across the globe, building communities based on shared interests, experiences, and goals. Despite the potential for furthering our understanding of communities more generally through exploring them in online contexts, online communities have not generally been a focus of community psychologists. A conceptual, state-of-the-art review of eight major community psychology journals revealed 23 descriptive or empirical articles concerning online communities have been published in the past 20 years. These articles are primarily descriptive and can be organized into four categories: community building and maintenance (seven articles, 30.43%), community support (six articles, 26.09%), norms and attitudes (six articles, 26.09%), and advocacy (four articles, 17.39%). These articles reflect a promising start to understanding how we can utilize the internet to build and enhance communities. They also indicate how much further we have to go, both in understanding online communities and certain concepts regarding community psychology more generally. Community psychologists involved in practice and applied settings specifically may benefit from understanding online communities as they become integral components of advocacy, community organizing, and everyday life.
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Putting the Puzzle Pieces Together: Identifying Gaps and Highlighting Assets for Public and Private Entities to Develop Obesity Programs and Direct Best Practices in Egypt
Worldwide, obesity is a growing epidemic and a leading non-communicative disease. Egypt has high levels of obesity, which is causing harm to both individuals and society. This study aimed to collect data on available programs and interventions, to assess gaps and explore assets and challenges to obesity programming in Egypt. The purpose of this article is to examine obesity from an ecological perspective, direct practical work related to obesity to help fill these gaps. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 25 participants from 22 different organizations, including ministries, governmental, non-governmental, international organizations, and for-profit organizations. Finally, participants provided their personal recommendations for combating obesity in Egypt. The findings from this research showed that there is a lack of nationwide programs and services that tackle obesity; however, there are some minor activities and services that tackle other health issues related to obesity. This information is beneficial to connect programs and build coalitions. Participants related their challenges to mainly contextual and ecological factors and recommended collaboration, partnerships and multi-sectorial programs on a mass scale including national campaigns to get obesity recognized and on the national agenda. Recommendations can help develop prevention strategies that are tailored to the socio-cultural and economic context of Egypt and similar countries.
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Celebrating 10 Years of the Global Journal of Community Psychology Practice
Over the last 10 years the Global Journal of Community Psychology Practice (GJCPP) has worked to provide high quality and practical information on community practice with the commitment to engage and expand the practice community and its broader social impact. The GJCPP offers community practitioners of a variety of backgrounds and professional affiliations a new opportunity for collaborative development, to increase skills, and to exchange information, ideas and resources. During the past 10 years the GJCPP has had over 30K users from across the world take advantage of the resources and content published. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the GJCPP we are proud to highlight a compilation of the 10 most popular articles, editorials, tools and issues from 2010 - 2020.
Tools of the Trade
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Making Collaboration Count: A Tool for Tracking and Building Participation in Community Collaboratives and Coalitions
Evaluation is necessary not only for assessing the impact of programs and interventions, but also for gathering actionable feedback on the ways in which organizations work together. Continuous evaluation of collaboratives themselves can help to address common issues, such as getting the right people at the table, balancing multiple stakeholder priorities, avoiding tokenism, and perhaps most importantly, encouraging participation and maintaining it over time. With the growing interest in collaborative processes over the past several years—and with collaboration and coalition development as a key practice competency identified by the Society for Community Research and Action (2012)—it is necessary to identify new tools that can be used to evaluate coalition processes, promote participation, and to ensure that these groups function in a way that promotes working toward collective goals. This article presents a tool and supporting strategies for tracking and encouraging participation in collaborative processes, as well as a case example illustrating how this tool has been utilized within the North Jersey Health Collaborative.
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