What Is A Coalition?

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The term “coalition” has been used in our society since the early 1990’s; unfortunately, over time, the term has been used indiscriminately. To make matters more complicated, some entities that call themselves “coalitions” are fundamentally behaving or acting as a satellite organization of the fiscal agent (health department, school district, local NPO, or other government entity). DCHYC and its members have committed to behaving, serving, and supporting the Douglas County Community as a traditional “community-based coalition”.

We define a coalition as the following:

“A voluntary, formal agreement and collaboration between citizens, groups or sectors of a community in which each group retains its identity but all agree to work together toward a common goal of enhancing one other’s capacity, to achieve a common purpose and or goal by sharing risks, responsibilities, resources and rewards.” – Himmelman (adapted)

For a coalition to achieve population level change in their community, it must be community-owned. This means that members of the community that are most affected by the public health issues are at the table, as well as other entities that have a stake in tackling the problem(s) at hand.

Entities that have a stake in these issues can include: