Is the Community Ready to Sustain It? Posted on March 19, 2007 Community readiness is a key element in sustainability, states Teresa D. LaFromboise (bio).

That is a very difficult part of it, is the sustainability part. First of all I think communities are very excited about new things and certainly when the money is there it's very good, then the money comes in another direction and a new intervention comes in and maybe that one is shelved for a bit of time.

And I have to say that I really appreciate the work - I don't know how many of the people who might see this have heard of the Community Readiness Model or not, out of the Colorado State University, the Tri-Ethnic Center. But they have done studies on the projects that they have been involved with, those that did community readiness versus those that didn't and something like 70 percent of those that went through a readiness procedure were sustained.

And one of the things about that process is really not taking on interventions that couldn't be sustained with limited funds and the personnel that's there; that's part of the planning, which I think is really very important and certainly something that I'm trying to build into the work that I do as I'm beginning any new projects.

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