The Center for Community Health Development (CCHD) at Texas A&M Health Science Center School of Rural Public Health, since its inception in 2001, has worked to bring academic and community partners together to reduce the burden of preventable diseases and conditions that affect rural and underserved populations in communities across Texas.   While most of its work has been focused on the Brazos Valley and South Texas, CCHD has provided services in more than 100 of Texas’ 254 counties and this number continues to grow each year.  

Partnering with Communities to Understand and Address Health Disparities

Rural, minority, and low-income populations often face significant health disparities based on a host of factors.  CCHD’s interdisciplinary research team has partnered with communities in Central Texas and South Texas to formally assess health in their communities, identify priorities, develop strategies to address their priorities, and evaluate the effectiveness of these strategies when implemented.  These community-based projects have focused on a broad range of issues, including access to care, diabetes prevention and management, access to healthy food, breast cancer screening and treatment, affordable transportation to services, access to mental health services, childhood obesity, cancer survivorship, and health coverage options for employees of small businesses. 

Training Lay and Professional Public Health Practitioners

As part of our mission, CCHD extends training and technical assistance to individuals and organizations already engaged in community-based health programs and research.  Drawing from the expertise and experience of our network of affiliated faculty members, the Center’s trainings have focused on topics such as logic modeling, evaluation, grant writing, funding diversity, community-based participatory research, network analysis, strategic planning, organizational development, and leadership development. In addition, CCHD is certified as a community health worker/promotora training center by the Texas Department of State Health Services.  Through our projects, we have provided over 49,000 hours of training for 687 promotoras in Texas in topics such as diabetes management, mental health, breast cancer prevention, solid waste disposal, and immunizations. 

Educating the Next Generation

 To ensure that the lessons learned through our work is used to inform future researchers and practitioners, CCHD strives both to integrate projects into relevant masters and doctoral-level courses for students and to employ students whenever possible.  Since 2001, the Center has provided hands-on experience in community based participatory approaches to research and practice to over 100 students through graduate assistantships and practicum opportunities.   Over the past nine years, grants and contracts awarded to CCHD totaled just over $30 million and as a Center, our products include four books and 20 chapters, over 150 professional journal articles, and nearly 300 scientific or professional presentations.

The Center for Community Health Development is a member of the Prevention Research Centers Program. Funding was made possible (in part) by cooperative agreement number 1U48 DP001924 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).