Author Description

"Health Extension: Community-Based Healthcare and the Future of Cooperative Extension advocates for Health Extension as an integral part of the Land Grant University system and a significant partner in providing community-based healthcare in the United States and worldwide. The contributions of a diverse array of scholars challenge the status quo in the Cooperative Extension System (CES) by characterizing the introspection, understanding, creativity, partnerships, and leadership that will be required to improve lives and communities in the twenty-first century through an enhanced focus on health and public health. This perspective underscores the role of CES as foundational to the future of Health Extension and offers an alternative to approaches that utilize the CES as a model without the accompanying advantages of history, community embeddedness, and sustainability. This volume explores innovation in Extension health programs, engaged scholarship promoting research-based information in communities, and the evaluation and documentation of community programs and their impacts. Authors provide Land-Grant and university-based colleagues with up-to-date information on using Cooperative Extension for community engagement in healthcare while also familiarizing those outside CES and the academy with a roadmap for improving community-based healthcare by enhancing the role of Cooperative Extension in community-engaged research, programming, and health interventions"--