title: A Systematic Review of the Literature on the Sustainability of Community Health Collaboratives.
abstract: Recent interest in community health collaboratives has been driven by the potential of these types of organizations to solve complex health problems at the local level by bringing together stakeholders that have traditionally operated independently, and often at cross-purposes. Much of the work that is central to the mission of collaboratives can take years to reach fruition, however, and there are a number of challenges to sustaining their activities. In this article, we systematically reviewed the theoretical and empirical literature on health care collaborative sustainability, focusing on definitions and antecedents of sustainability. Given the diversity and fragmentation of this literature, we used this review as a foundation to develop a synthesized definition, conceptual groups of antecedents, and potential research propositions to help guide future research, planning, and practice of sustainable community health collaboratives.
authors.affiliation: University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA lhearld@uab.edu.
authors.forename: Larry R
authors.initials: LR
authors.lastname: Hearld
authors.affiliation: The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA.
authors.forename: William K
authors.initials: WK
authors.lastname: Bleser
authors.affiliation: University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
authors.forename: Jeffrey A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Alexander
authors.affiliation: The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA.
authors.forename: Laura J
authors.initials: LJ
authors.lastname: Wolf
mesh_terms: D019058:Community Networks / Q000458:organization & administration; D006801:Humans; D000070516:Intersectoral Collaboration; D015397:Program Evaluation; D014481:United States
keywords: community health collaboratives; sustainability; systematic review