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Effectiveness of a grant program's efforts to promote synergy within its funded initiatives: perceptions of participants of the Southern Rural Access Program
BACKGROUND: Foundations and public agencies commonly fund focused initiatives for individual grantees. These discrete, stand-alone initiatives can risk failure by being carried out in isolation. Fostering synergy among grantees' initiatives is one strategy proposed for promoting the success and...
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Formato: | Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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BioMed Central
2008
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2621197/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19094212 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6963-8-263 |
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author | Pathman, Donald E Chuang, Emmeline Weiner, Bryan J |
author_facet | Pathman, Donald E Chuang, Emmeline Weiner, Bryan J |
author_sort | Pathman, Donald E |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Foundations and public agencies commonly fund focused initiatives for individual grantees. These discrete, stand-alone initiatives can risk failure by being carried out in isolation. Fostering synergy among grantees' initiatives is one strategy proposed for promoting the success and impact of grant programs. We evaluate an explicit strategy to build synergy within the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Southern Rural Access Program (SRAP), which awarded grants to collaboratives within eight southeastern U.S. states to strengthen basic health care services in targeted rural counties. METHODS: We interviewed 39 key participants of the SRAP, including the program director within each state and the principal subcontractors heading the program's funded initiatives that supported heath professionals' recruitment, retention and training, made loans to health care providers, and built networks among providers. Interews were recorded and transcribed. Two investigators independently coded the transcripts and a third investigator distilled the main points. RESULTS: Participants generally perceived that the SRAP yielded more synergies than other grant programs in which they had participated and that these synergies added to the program's impact. The synergies most often noted were achieved through relationship building among grantees and with outside agencies, sharing information and know-how, sharing resources, combining efforts to yield greater capacity, joining voices to advocate for common goals, and spotting gaps in services offered and then filling these gaps. The SRAP's strategies that participants felt fostered synergy included targeting funding to culturally and geographically similar states, supporting complementary types of initiatives, promoting opportunities to network through semi-annual meetings and regular conference calls, and the advocacy efforts of the program's leadership. Participants noted that synergies were sometimes hindered by turf issues and politics and the conflicting perspectives and cultures of participating organizations and racial groups. Inadequate funding through the SRAP, restricting program involvement to only a few needy counties, and instances of over- and under-involvement by the program's leadership were sometimes felt to inhibit synergies and/or their sustainability. CONCLUSION: Participants of the SRAP generally perceived that the SRAP's deliberate strategies yielded synergies that added to the program's impact. |
format | Text |
id | pubmed-2621197 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2008 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-26211972009-01-13 Effectiveness of a grant program's efforts to promote synergy within its funded initiatives: perceptions of participants of the Southern Rural Access Program Pathman, Donald E Chuang, Emmeline Weiner, Bryan J BMC Health Serv Res Research Article BACKGROUND: Foundations and public agencies commonly fund focused initiatives for individual grantees. These discrete, stand-alone initiatives can risk failure by being carried out in isolation. Fostering synergy among grantees' initiatives is one strategy proposed for promoting the success and impact of grant programs. We evaluate an explicit strategy to build synergy within the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Southern Rural Access Program (SRAP), which awarded grants to collaboratives within eight southeastern U.S. states to strengthen basic health care services in targeted rural counties. METHODS: We interviewed 39 key participants of the SRAP, including the program director within each state and the principal subcontractors heading the program's funded initiatives that supported heath professionals' recruitment, retention and training, made loans to health care providers, and built networks among providers. Interews were recorded and transcribed. Two investigators independently coded the transcripts and a third investigator distilled the main points. RESULTS: Participants generally perceived that the SRAP yielded more synergies than other grant programs in which they had participated and that these synergies added to the program's impact. The synergies most often noted were achieved through relationship building among grantees and with outside agencies, sharing information and know-how, sharing resources, combining efforts to yield greater capacity, joining voices to advocate for common goals, and spotting gaps in services offered and then filling these gaps. The SRAP's strategies that participants felt fostered synergy included targeting funding to culturally and geographically similar states, supporting complementary types of initiatives, promoting opportunities to network through semi-annual meetings and regular conference calls, and the advocacy efforts of the program's leadership. Participants noted that synergies were sometimes hindered by turf issues and politics and the conflicting perspectives and cultures of participating organizations and racial groups. Inadequate funding through the SRAP, restricting program involvement to only a few needy counties, and instances of over- and under-involvement by the program's leadership were sometimes felt to inhibit synergies and/or their sustainability. CONCLUSION: Participants of the SRAP generally perceived that the SRAP's deliberate strategies yielded synergies that added to the program's impact. BioMed Central 2008-12-18 /pmc/articles/PMC2621197/ /pubmed/19094212 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6963-8-263 Text en Copyright © 2008 Pathman et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Pathman, Donald E Chuang, Emmeline Weiner, Bryan J Effectiveness of a grant program's efforts to promote synergy within its funded initiatives: perceptions of participants of the Southern Rural Access Program |
title | Effectiveness of a grant program's efforts to promote synergy within its funded initiatives: perceptions of participants of the Southern Rural Access Program |
title_full | Effectiveness of a grant program's efforts to promote synergy within its funded initiatives: perceptions of participants of the Southern Rural Access Program |
title_fullStr | Effectiveness of a grant program's efforts to promote synergy within its funded initiatives: perceptions of participants of the Southern Rural Access Program |
title_full_unstemmed | Effectiveness of a grant program's efforts to promote synergy within its funded initiatives: perceptions of participants of the Southern Rural Access Program |
title_short | Effectiveness of a grant program's efforts to promote synergy within its funded initiatives: perceptions of participants of the Southern Rural Access Program |
title_sort | effectiveness of a grant program's efforts to promote synergy within its funded initiatives: perceptions of participants of the southern rural access program |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2621197/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19094212 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6963-8-263 |
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