In the last several years, health promotion specialists have stressed the importance of multiple interventions aimed both at individuals who are at health risk, and at risk-producing environments and policies (Milio, 1980; McLeroy et al., 1988; Pentz et al., 1989; Winett et al., 1989). The current emphasis on multiple interventions at multiple levels of the 'social ecology' is a response to the severity and complexity of chronic health conditions that are rooted in a larger social, cultural, political and economic fabric. The current wisdom in health promotion holds that targeting the behavior of individuals, without also intervening at these other social levels that shape behavior, will not have as great an impact on health status (McLeroy et al., 1988; Minkler, 1989; Hawkins and Catalano, 1992; Stokols, 1992). The development of coalitions of community agencies, institutions and concerned citizens to combat chronic health conditions is gaining popularity as an intervention aimed at strengthening the social fabric. Currently, hundreds of millions of dollars are being invested in coalition development as a health promotion intervention. For instance, both the COMMIT and ASSIST community tobacco control programs, funded by the National Institutes for Health, require coalitions of citizens in order to develop local strategies to decrease tobacco use (National Cancer Institute, 1988; Shopland, 1989).

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Community coalitions for prevention and health promotion

This article analyzes feminist organizations as a species of social movement organization. It identifies 10 dimensions for comparing feminist and nonfeminist organizations or for deriving types of feminist organizations and analyzing them. The dimensions are feminist ideology, feminist values, feminist goals, feminist outcomes (for members and society), founding circumstances, structure, practice, members and membership, scope and scale, and external relations (legal-corporate status, autonomy, funding, and network linkages). I argue that many scholars judge feminist organizations against an ideal type that is largely unattainable and that excessive attention has been paid to the issue of bureaucracy versus collectivism to the neglect of other organizational qualities. The varieties of ideology, form, and strategy that feminist organizations embody should be analyzed in relation to outcomes for women, the women's movement, and society. As has recently begun to occur, feminist scholars are encouraged to cl...

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Rethinking feminist organizations

Using data from a nationally representative sample of 50 rape crisis centers, this article investigates the range of center types, services offered, staffing, involvement in community networks, funding and affiliation with criminal justice, counseling, and human services agencies. The evolution of the rape crisis center from the few prototype centers opened in 1972 to the many different models existing today is traced. The most important finding is that rape crisis centers today do not fall neatly into types. Rather, they have developed to fit their communities, making choices about whom to serve, where to locate a service, how to work with other agencies in the community, how, when, and where to do community education, and how to establish financial security. A decision about one such dimension does not necessarily predict what the decision will be about the other dimensions.

Structure and Activities of Rape Crisis Centers in the Early 1980s

Planning and Organizing for Social Change: Action Principles from Social Science Research.

Rape and Its Victims: A Report for Citizens, Health Facilities, and Criminal Justice Agencies. A Prescriptive Package.

The study empirically examined the value of interorganizational rela tions to voluntary associations; the data are from questionnaires sent to rape crisis centers in the United States. Interorganizational cooperation was studied as it was associated with structural variations and as it affected organizational effectiveness. No relationship was found between structure and cooperation; however, centers with staff tended to have community ties and more of them. The more centralized the decision making, the more organizational contacts; the difference between this and previous research seems to be due to differences in conceptualization of centralization. Cooperation was not found to be related to demands for services or speakers; there was a relationship to the extent of programs designed to train agency personnel. The number of interorganizational contacts was directly related to the number of volunteers active in a center and to the number of minority-group members. It was concluded that there are no benef...

Elizabethann O'Sullivan

Papers

Interorganizational Cooperation: How Effective for Grassroots Organizations?.