Center for Community Action Research & Evaluation
The Community Action team develops relationships and enhances collaboration with local and state-level community partners to build a healthy community. They support evidence-based interventions and evaluation of partner initiatives to demonstrate community impact and research and identify relevant community health issues to inform practice.
The team’s collaborative work has contributed to Greenville County receiving the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Culture of Health Prize in 2020. The Culture of Health Prize recognizes communities that advance equitable access to housing, education, workforce development, transportation, and health care in the region. The team is also part of a Greenville coalition to receive the BUILD Health Challenge award to reduce racial disparities in youth obesity in the White Horse Road corridor of Greenville.
Current Initiatives of Community Action
LiveWell Greenville
LiveWell Greenville (LWG) is a coalition of 250+ partner organizations with the mission to champion equitable access to physical activity and healthy eating opportunities for all Greenville County residents through policy, systems, and environment changes. The IACH’s Director of Community Action serves as LWG’s principal investigator, overseeing research and evaluation activities for such studies as the Greenville County Youth Obesity Study and Build Trust, Build Health.
The Magdalene Clinic
The Community Action team serves as the evaluation partner for the Magdalene Clinic, a specialized, judgment-free obstetrician-gynecologist clinic for pregnant women with substance use disorder (SUD) in Greenville County. Through evaluation the team ensures fidelity to the intervention model and is responsible for a comprehensive analysis, demonstrating impact of the model on behavioral, physical, and social determinant impacts for mother and baby.
Community Care
Prisma Health’s Community Care connects high-risk senior patients, in need of social support upon discharge, with volunteers in the Greenville community. The Community Action team develops and assesses the impact of this model of volunteer community teams, to support social determinants of health and activities of daily living needs of senior citizens and their families.
Upstate Medical Legal Partnership
Established in 2016, the Medical Legal Partnership connects Furman University, Prisma Health and South Carolina Legal services in work to improve the health of people throughout the Upstate, especially those living in poverty. The partnership – the first of its kind in South Carolina – coordinates and streamlines access to non-medical assistance when a medical problem has roots in or is made worse by a social or legal problem. The Community Action team evaluates the Upstate Medical-Legal Partnership (MLP), working to ensure evidence-based implementation, integration of data collection, and analysis and reporting of our MLP’s impact on system and patient outcomes.
The Well Being Partnership
The Well Being Partnership (WBP) is an association of behavioral health partners who are working to increase access to care and prevention efforts by strengthening the community capacity of Greenville County. The WBP takes on the capacity-building role in improving Greenville’s well-being by focusing on three main roles: Data & Learning, Advocacy & Public Policy, and Solutions & Innovation. The IACH serves as the primary evaluation partner for the WBP.
