Designing Community Frameworks That Support Learning, Implementation, and Local Leadership

Over the past year, much of my work has focused on helping develop a community model framework that supports youth mental health and wellbeing, particularly as it relates to screen use. It has been an incredibly rewarding contract to be part of – both because of the urgency of the issue and the thoughtfulness communities and partners are bringing to it.

This work has also had me thinking – again – about something that has followed me throughout my career in prevention and community change: structure. Not structure for its own sake, but the kind that makes community work possible, sustainable, and owned by the people doing it.

In community work, conversations about this are rarely simple. Too much structure, and the work starts to feel like a top-down approach – something designed elsewhere and delivered locally. Too little structure, and even the most motivated and engaged communities can find themselves stuck, revisiting the same work as challenges arise, funding cycles shift, or key champions move on.

This tension isn’t new for me. Early in my career, while developing a statewide pilot informed by models like the Icelandic Prevention Model, I found myself asking a question I’m still sitting with today:

How do you build enough support into a framework at the regional or statewide level – while still giving communities the autonomy to make the work truly their own?

Over time, my focus has shifted toward processes. Less emphasis on planning out and designing every little detail, and more on creating the conditions that help communities implement, adapt, and sustain the work over time and on their own terms.

Part of this shift has been accepting that success doesn’t come from managing every detail at higher levels of the structure. Community processes work because learning and growth happen locally, in response to real conditions. Trying to control that too tightly often undermines the very outcomes we’re hoping for.

In practice, this has meant paying closer attention to how frameworks shape decision-making without overdetermining outcomes.

These are the design choices I’ve seen matter most for regional leaders, funders, and community coalitions trying to balance accountability and consistency with local ownership:

• Predictable cycles, not fixed schedules: Rather than locking communities into exact schedules, effective frameworks establish predictable cycles that include reflection, planning, action, and learning that communities can move through at a pace that fits their context and capacity.

• For example, instead of requiring quarterly action plans with set due dates, a framework might ask communities to move through a reflection–planning–action cycle once per year, adjusting the pace based on local capacity, staffing, and readiness.

• Timelines and examples, not predefined decisions: Strong structure clarifies timeframes for decision making and examples, without telling communities what the decisions should be.

• For example, a framework might specify that communities review local data each spring and decide on priority focus areas without prescribing what those priorities must be or how they should be addressed.

• Shared language that invites adaptation: When frameworks offer common terms and concepts while leaving room for communities to define what they mean locally, it creates alignment while still honoring local context and lived experience.

• For example, a framework might define concepts such as “protective factors” or “community readiness,” while encouraging each community to describe what those concepts look like in its own context and culture.

• Roles that reduce dependency: This means trusting the people who are hired and embedded in the work to lead it. Clear roles and expectations matter – but so does giving local leaders the space, time, and support to take responsibility, make decisions, and learn through the work, rather than relying on constant outside direction and constant reporting out on their actions.

• For example, this might look like regional staff providing coaching and coordination, as well as tools and resources, while trusting local leads to facilitate meetings, interpret data, and guide decisions independently. This also includes being thoughtful about which regional meetings truly require community participation so that local leaders can focus their time on implementation.

• Community Ownership: Tools, templates, and data aren’t just for reporting upward. They’re designed so communities can use them to understand their own work, tell their own story, and guide their future decisions.

• For example, documentation might be structured around questions communities are already asking – What’s working? What’s shifting? What needs attention next? – rather than around externally defined reporting categories.

Rather than relying on a single formula, I use these questions to test whether a framework is doing what it’s supposed to.

• Does this structure help people feel confident to lead independently or feel more managed?

• Could the community explain their work without me in the room?

• Could this work still move forward if there are changes in staff, funding, or leadership?

• Who is the structure primarily serving?

• Are local leaders making meaningful decisions or mostly responding to requirements?

• Are we trusting people closest to the work to lead or trying to manage every step of the process?

• Is feedback shaping the work, or is it just being collected?

• What is the framework allowing us to notice that we might miss otherwise?

These perspectives come from having worked at many different levels of this work over time – from direct service as a community mental health worker, to managing regional health promotion efforts, to leading and developing a statewide pilot for universal prevention, and later serving as an advisor at the international level. Each role has offered a different view of how structure helps – or hinders – what’s happening on the ground.

What’s been consistent across those levels is this: the closer the work gets to communities, the more critical it is that structure supports learning and adaptation, rather than rigid expectations.

That’s the space I’ve been working in lately – between community autonomy and multi-level responsibilities – trying to design frameworks that can hold the work steady while still leaving room for communities to decide what matters most to them, and how they want to get there.

I’m sharing these reflections because the same questions keep surfacing, in different places and different forms. Writing feels like a way to slow the thinking down and invite others into the conversation.

I don’t have a perfect formula. I’m still learning where structure supports autonomy – and where it quietly starts to undermine it. But it’s a question worth staying with.

Wherever you sit in the work, where might structure be doing more than it needs to at the expense of community leadership?

One place to start: look at one meeting, requirement, or tool you’re responsible for and ask whether it’s helping communities learn and lead – or simply maintaining habit.