In this climate of increasing demand for quantifiable results but limited funding, most public health funders require CBOs and local health departments to implement “evidence-based” interventions – models that have been previously shown to be effective in certain circumstances. While these interventions are sometimes appropriate, they are not always applicable to all communities and current scenarios, and particularly need to be adapted to fit communities of color, women, and other socially marginalized sectors.

Conversely, some highly effective interventions developed at the grass roots level may not have the academic legitimacy, methodological rigor, professional support, or political connections necessary to be recognized as sufficiently “evidence-based”.

What’s more, currently mandated models of intervention use a cognitive behavioral framework, focusing on individual behavior separate from larger forces that socially dominate, politically oppress, emotionally injure and economically exploit certain communities.

As community advocates, program evaluators, and community-based researchers, we see capacity-building as assisting local action toward wellness by strengthening an organization’s ability to operate and effectively respond to communities’ changing social and health needs by:

• Assessing an organization’s internal capacity to deliver community-relevant services and facilitate community action
• Creating forums, including national web-based seminars, to discuss culturally responsive advocacy, program design and services
• Facilitating dialogue between community practitioners and academicians
• Improving community-based participatory research skills
• Facilitating meaningful and useful evaluation of programs
• Increasing viability of CBOs and other public health entities through improved personnel management and training
• Utilizing cognitive-behavioral interventions while acknowledging the need for structural interventions
• Sharing models that integrate individual-, group-, and community-level interventions aimed at preventing HIV transmission and other socially-determined diseases

Simply put, we see capacity-building as strengthening the ability of an agency to fulfill their mission in an effective and principled manner.