Community access programs can encourage healthy or beneficial behaviors by providing opportunities to engage in them. They can also discourage unhealthy or harmful behavior by making it more difficult to engage in it.

Administrative barriers like long forms, difficult phone systems or confusing rules and regulations can make it hard for people to access services.

Access

Community access support Services provides one-on-one meetings with staff to link you to healthcare and services in the community. Services include mental health, substance use and housing.

In information technology, access (also known as ac-cess) is the ability to view or modify data in a database. It can also refer to a level of privilege, such as administrator access in the context of computers and servers that offers complete visibility and control of system functions.

In Microsoft Access, the word access can refer to a database template, which includes tables, queries, forms and reports that users can connect together with macros. Advanced users can create solutions using Visual Basic for Applications, or VBA, a scripting language based on Visual Basic 6.0. It is possible to write rich solutions with advanced automation and data manipulation. These solutions are often used for reporting. In addition, the program can export data into many formats and perform heterogeneous joins between data sets stored on different platforms.

Barriers

Many studies identify a number of different barriers to accessing health and community services. One involves funding, without which services either won't exist or won't be adequate to meet need. Another concerns physical access, including the need for elevators, ramps, wide corridors, and other accommodations to accommodate those with disabilities or handicaps.

Psychological barriers can also hold people back, including the inability to ask for help, the inability to speak a particular language, and the inability to form support groups to encourage healthy behavior or to address unhealthy behaviors. Changing these barriers requires the right mix of public and private support, such as the kind provided by a community access program that embeds trained patient advocates in a primary care clinic. It can also mean changing services, amenities, products, and information so that they are more attractive to those who need them, such as modifying snack food displays in stores or convincing restaurants to replace junk foods with healthier choices.

Opportunities

In a community access program, communities, organizations, and individuals take steps to increase opportunities for participation in healthy activities. This often involves modifying services, amenities, products, and information to be accessible to a specific group of people. For example, you might change the schedule of a public service to accommodate working people; provide culturally sensitive education on an issue to a minority group; or encourage restaurants to offer more healthy food choices.

Another aspect of community access is providing information in a way that is accessible to everyone, such as through the Internet or on the radio. You might also encourage the spread of information that would not otherwise reach everyone, such as through word-of-mouth or a bulletin board in a laundromat. In addition, you can create opportunities to take advantage of things like health programs that teach smoking cessation or job training, but it is still up to the individual to choose whether or not to seize those opportunities.

Change

Community access programs rely on a variety of theoretical frameworks, including ecological systems theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1979), person-in-environment theories (Hare, 2004; Konart, 2002), and collective efficacy and social disorganization theories (Sampson, 2003). These central ideas inform why it makes sense that changes at the community level would be expected to affect outcomes for individuals.

The community development strategies that dominated all of the programs reviewed include community engagement and developing and strengthening local leadership and community networking, which promote cooperation among organizations, services, and residents. These programs are designed to address a community’s mental, physical, cultural, and economic characteristics.

For example, the Faithful Families Thriving Communities program uses nutrition and health education in faith-based settings to help people make healthy life choices. This helps them to reduce their risk factors for poor health and chronic illnesses. This also builds relationships between faith leaders and their communities and increases community involvement in the program. In addition, it teaches participants how to become advocates for themselves and their neighbors.