Share Successes and Lessons Learned

Sharing successes and lessons learned can help other rural communities understand how to replicate and implement their own community health programs. Sharing program outcomes with participants and other community members can also help rural communities build trust and buy-in for program activities. When sharing successes, rural communities may consider highlighting the following:

• Program mission
• Effectiveness of the program
• Acceptability in the community
• Sustainability

Lessons learned may be identified throughout program implementation or discussed formally with partners at the end of the project. Programs may disseminate lessons learned at the local, state, and national levels to reach as many people as possible. Lessons learned may include information about:

• Challenges encountered during implementation, such as stigma associated with seeking behavioral health services or environmental factors that may impact the success of the intervention
• Best practices and innovative strategies used to address challenges, such as integrating primary care and behavioral health services to reduce stigma
• Project findings or new information learned from a project that may be replicable in another community, such as the importance of community partnerships when integrating services
• Resources that were most important when implementing a program, such as funding, staff, and a champion to advance the work

For examples of programs sharing these types of information, see the Rural Health Models and Innovations section.

Resources to Learn More

Success Stories
Website
Offers a tool for grantees and communities to create a story of their program and program activities to share with partners, decision makers, and funders. Includes a library for CDC grantees to showcase how their funding was use and the importance of their project.
Organization(s): Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Success Stories
Website
Provides success stories demonstrating the impact Rural Development programs have on rural communities.
Organization(s): Rural Development U.S. Department of Agriculture

Lessons Learned
Website
Defines lessons learned and describes the procedure for documenting them. Provides tools to help organizations when identifying and recording lessons learned from the process of performing the project.
Organization(s): Centers for Disease Control and Prevention