Community Health and Development News

LAWRENCE — Even in communities with barriers to health care, exercise opportunities and healthy food, residents with diabetes saw improved health outcomes when they participated in programs that took a coordinated care approach to diabetes self-management.

The KU Work Group for Community Health and Development has received a one-year $276,00 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to identify and understand benchmarks of success among improvement initiatives aimed at community health systems.

Three prominent international groups recently partnered with the KU Work Group for Community Health and Development.

The Community Tool Box, a project of the Work Group on Community Health and Development, was featured in a TEDxKC event held in Kansas City on Aug.

KU community health and development research staff are on the ground in Wyandotte County helping build healthier communities one tienda—or neighborhood store—at a time.

Following the August 14 retirement of long-time director Steve Fawcett, Vincent Francisco will head up the Work Group for Community Health and Development and hold the Kansas Health Foundation Professorship in Applied Behavioral Science. 

Vincent Francisco has been selected to oversee the leadership team at the KU Work Group for Community Health and Development, one of 14 affiliated research centers of the University of Kansas Life Span Institute. He will also hold the Kansas Health Foundation Professorship in the Department of Applied Behavioral Science in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

LAWRENCE — Talk about timely. In 1995, when the Internet’s popularity was soaring, the University of Kansas Work Group for Community Health and Development launched the Community Tool Box website — a free resource to help communities at home and abroad improve health and development.