title: Disseminating online tools for building capacity among community practitioners.
abstract: To prepare the workforce for building healthier communities, we need to assure capabilities of a diverse and geographically distributed community of practitioners. Although the Internet is used extensively to disseminate practice information, less is known about the relative impact of various strategies for promoting its use. This empirical case study examines implementation of dissemination strategies and their association with increased user sessions in the online Community Tool Box (CTB), a widely used resource for community building. Dissemination activities included social media efforts, eNewsletters, search engine optimization efforts, partnering with other Web sites, and implementing a global Out of the Box Prize. Results suggest that increased user sessions were associated with search optimization and "mashups" delivering CTB content through partners' Web sites. The report concludes with a discussion of challenges and opportunities in promoting widespread use of capacity-building tools among those working to improve their communities.
authors.affiliation: Work Group for Community Health and Development, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045, USA. cholt@ku.edu
authors.forename: Christina M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Holt
authors.forename: Stephen B
authors.initials: SB
authors.lastname: Fawcett
authors.forename: Jerry A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Schultz
authors.forename: Jami A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Jones
authors.forename: Bill
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Berkowitz
authors.forename: Thomas J
authors.initials: TJ
authors.lastname: Wolff
authors.forename: Vincent T
authors.initials: VT
authors.lastname: Francisco
authors.forename: Philip W
authors.initials: PW
authors.lastname: Rabinowitz
mesh_terms: D057191:Capacity Building; D019058:Community Networks; D036262:Empirical Research; D006801:Humans; D033181:Information Dissemination; D020407:Internet; D013664:Teaching Materials; D014481:United States