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Health and Wellness

Use the Community Model

Have you ever wondered why a community is the way that it is? Perhaps why there are so many or so few homeless people in one community but not in another? Or maybe why in some communities so many homes have been falling into foreclosure lately while in others fewer seem to be?

Social scientists wonder about these things a lot!

Based on the work of community scholars, we have created a model that shows you, in a picture, how aspects of communities interact with each other to produce certain outcomes. The model we have created and posted below is just an introduction to how communities work. As you look it over, perhaps you can think about how closely it aligns with your ideas about how your community works.

The following PDF files walk you through step by step what a community is, what each aspect of the model means, and how it works.