Steps for Health Educators to Ensure Coalitions Remain Intact

Coalitions Research Paper
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A coalition refers to a pool of organizations or people sharing common interests and who have grouped to work towards a common goal. Such a goal could entail getting funding for specific health interventions or working towards improving health quality in a community. A coalition plays an integral role in addressing health issues in a community, although it may encounter challenges, especially when two parties present divergent views or opinions. As a co-leader of a formed coalition working towards addressing the escalating adolescent homicide rate in the nearby community, it is fundamental to take proactive measures to ensure the coalition is intact and mitigate conflicts between members. This paper critically discusses significant steps for a health educator to ensure coalition cohesion, approaches to extinguish or minimize conflicts due to members' divergent opinions, and suggestions for effective coordination between the coalition members and the entire community.
What Steps Could You, as the Health Educator, Take to Ensure Your Coalition Remains Intact?
There are various steps that a co-leader should take to ensure that the coalition stays intact. There should be open communication by ensuring communication channels remain available within the alliance and among the community, media, and team. As a co-leader providing open communication will foster a sense of belonging and access to necessary information by every coalition member and, thus, the success of its efforts. A co-leader should be as participatory and inclusive as possible and make the coalition a group where every member feels welcome and continues to express their opinions. Every coalition member should participate despite their stance in generating mission and vision statements, planning, and making significant decisions. If the members have a sense of ownership of the coalition, they will work harder towards its goals and will not allow minor conflicts and turf issues to affect the coalition's progress (Rabinowitz, n.d.).
A coalition's co-leader should ensure intense networking by trying to involve or inform as many community stakeholders as possible. Applying or informing stakeholders in the communitive will support the coalition's activities and thus reduce any division challenges within the alliance. The coalition's leadership should set concrete and attainable goals since attaining reachable goals in advance is fundamental for the collaboration to strengthen the cooperation and morale to pursue and reach long-term goals. Co-leaders should be creative concerning meetings so coalition stakeholders do not feel like their work revolves around meetings. Every coalition meeting should be different and have fun elements, which will help retain interest and membership in the coalition. Moreover, the co-leader should acknowledge diversity among the coalition's members and their opinions and beliefs. Not every member will agree with the activities or views of the alliance due to diversities in culture, religion, race, economy, and ethnicity; sometimes, the minority opinion may be correct (Rabinowitz, n.d.). Therefore, every idea and restraint should be considered and utilize diversity to spur discussion rather than create division. Lastly, the co-leader should create awareness of the necessity of the coalition's maintenance and decide on engaging in the maintenance plan (Berkowitz, n.d.-a).
How Might You Minimize and/or Extinguish the Conflict Between the Two Members?
There are various approaches that a co-leader can employ to extinguish or minimize conflicts between two members of a group. A co-leader should thank the prospective members for taking the time to attend the meeting. Expressing appreciation is practical, reinforces good behavior during the session, and supports the coalition's activities and goals. A co-leader should commence with small talk that shows the members' mutual interest since this builds relationships between the members with divergent opinions to cool the tension between the members. Also, a co-leader should explain the purpose of the meeting from their perspective and state what they are looking for, but it should not take a lot of time to avoid escalating the conflict between the two members. Also, a co-leader should explain the benefits of the coalition's goals for the conflicting parties, like helping the community, solv...