Building Cross-sector Collaboration

Solving today's complex health and social issues effectively and equitably is beyond the purview of any one agency, organization, or discipline. Working cross-sectorally represents a key opportunity for communities to create significant, sustainable improvements in health and equity outcomes. Prevention Institute's collaboration tools emerged from experience working in health coalitions and partnerships; they are presented for practitioners—both new to and seasoned in collaboration—who are interested in building, strengthening, and sustaining inter-sectoral partnerships designed around an integrated prevention approach. This category includes the following tools:

Developing Effective Coalitions: An 8-Step Guide

This step-by-step guide to coalition building helps partnerships launch and stabilize successfully. It supports advocates and practitioners in every aspect of the process—from determining the appropriateness of a coalition to selecting members, defining key elements, maintaining vitality, and conducting ongoing evaluations.

Tension of Turf

Successful coalitions learn to anticipate and validate turf issues as part of solidifying partnerships and gathering their full strength. Tension of Turf is the Institute's companion tool to its 8-step process of coalition building. It offers practical support for skillfully managing the dynamic tension that commonly arises when people collaborate. This guide helps coalitions derive authentic, constructive power from their varying perspectives, skills, and mandates.

Collaboration Multiplier

Collaboration Multiplier offers multi-disciplinary coalitions an interactive framework for evaluating each partner's skills. It helps them more effectively target their individual and joint needs and apply their skill sets, thereby multiplying collective accomplishments.

Prevention Institute has adapted Collaboration Multiplier to prevent violence in Multi-Sector Partnerships for Preventing Violence and its companion document.

Collaboration Assessment Tool

Collaboration Assessment Tool helps individuals and coalitions identify specific strengths and areas of growth. It enables partnerships to subsequently establish a baseline and gauge their progress via periodic checks on domains of effective collaboration.

Strategic Alliance: A Decade of Advocacy
A Decade of Advocacy presents a case study of the Strategic Alliance, a network of 15 California-based organizations that came together to promote and support healthy food and activity environments. This document provides a roadmap for effective collaboration and highlights the impact a group of organizations can have when working together to achieve shared goals.