Tobacco-Control Groups Teach Lessons About Coalition Building

Working Together, Moving Ahead: A Manual to Support Effective Community Health Coalitions, by Shoshanna Sofaer, uses the experiences of tobacco-control coalitions to make broader points about the ways in which people can create and manage successful cooperative organizations. The manual covers the origins and purposes of community health coalitions, membership recruitment, methods of organizing, the acquisition and allotment of financial and human resources, leadership, decision making and conflict resolution, and phases of development in building coalitions. Ms. Sofaer, a professor in health policy and administration at the school of public affairs at the City University of New York’s Baruch College, developed this manual as part of an assessment of statewide tobacco-control coalitions supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s SmokeLess States Initiative.

Publisher: City University of New York, Baruch College, c/o Shoshanna Sofaer, 17 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010; (212) 802-5900; http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/spa; 52 pages; free.