A systems-in-transition paradigm for healthy communities

WHO is generating a new approach to public health in many nations. In Canada the new public health has stimulated important innovations such as the Health Promotion Framework in Achieving Health For All and the Canadian Healthy Communities Project. There is a need, however, for a political theory of social organization and change to facilitate social and political analysis of communities. This article proposes a paradigm which organizes community using a structural-functional approach linked with process components addressing community change through development, stress and conflict. A new definition of a healthy community is proffered using the language of the model. The emerging political role of community health practitioners in the new public health is described.