Skip Navigation Archive: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Archive: Agency for Healthcare Research Quality www.ahrq.gov
Archival print banner

This information is for reference purposes only. It was current when produced and may now be outdated. Archive material is no longer maintained, and some links may not work. Persons with disabilities having difficulty accessing this information should contact us at: https://info.ahrq.gov. Let us know the nature of the problem, the Web address of what you want, and your contact information.

Please go to www.ahrq.gov for current information.

Clinical-Community Linkages

Clinical-community linkages help to connect health care providers, community organizations, and public health agencies so they can improve patients' access to preventive and chronic care services.

Creating sustainable, effective linkages between the clinical and community settings can improve patients' access to preventive and chronic care services by developing partnerships between organizations that share a common goal of improving the health of people and the communities in which they live. These linkages connect clinical providers, community organizations, and public health agencies.

The goals of clinical-community linkages include:

  • Coordinating health care delivery, public health, and community-based activities to promote healthy behavior.
  • Forming partnerships and relationships among clinical, community, and public health organizations to fill gaps in needed services.
  • Promoting patient, family, and community involvement in strategic planning and improvement activities.

Types of clinical-community linkages include coordinating services at one location, coordinating services between different locations, and developing ways to refer patients to resources.

Why Are Clinical-Community Linkages Important?

Strategies that improve access to clinical preventive services (such as screening and counseling), community-level activities, and appropriate medical treatment have been shown to reduce and prevent disease in communities. Collaborations between clinical, community, and public health organizations offer a win-win scenario for participating organizations, clinical teams, and patients.

What do effective clinical-community linkages offer?

  • Patients get more help in changing unhealthy behaviors.
  • Clinicians get help in offering services to patients that they cannot provide themselves.
  • Community programs get help in connecting with clients for whom their services were designed.

How Can Clinical-Community Linkages Be Put Into Action?

It may seem obvious to link organizations that share similar goals for groups of patients. However, primary care clinicians, public health agencies, and community groups often provide services with little interaction with each other. To build and improve linkages across private and public health organizations within communities, it is important to identify gaps in needed health services and to fill those gaps by using the strengths and abilities of the participating organizations.

AHRQ's Innovations Exchange features examples of successful clinical-community collaborations and more resources for linking clinical practices and community organizations. These resources include:

Tools for making clinical-community linkages can also be found in the AHRQ Health Literacy Universal Precautions Toolkit:

Resources for Research on Community-Clinical Linkages

Conference Presentations

The following AHRQ Annual Conference presentations on clinical-community linkages are also available:

Strategies to Put Patients at the Center of Primary Care: Partnering for Health – 2011

Page last reviewed December 2016
Page originally created February 2013

Internet Citation: Clinical-Community Linkages. Content last reviewed December 2016. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD.
https://archive.ahrq.gov/ncepcr/tools/community/index.html

 

The information on this page is archived and provided for reference purposes only.

 

AHRQ Advancing Excellence in Health Care