The Center for Community Support and Research (CCSR) at Wichita State University has served Kansas for nearly 30 years. We recognize how individuals, organizations, and communities are connected and contribute to health and well-being. With this recognition in mind, we are dedicated to the belief that every individual has insights and experiences worthy of sharing and can use their strengths to significantly impact their organizations and communities. Likewise, we recognize that organizations and communities can impact individuals. This recognition is consistent with growing evidence from the World Health Organization (WHO), Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and National Institutes of Health (NIH) that point to the multiple factors that contribute to health and well-being .
Our interdisciplinary staff work closely with individuals, groups, and organizations, including non-profit organizations, state and local government, community coalitions, self-help groups, faith-based organizations, businesses, and schools. Our services build the capacity of individuals, organizations, and communities so that they can address local, regional, and statewide challenges.
CCSR works closely with its partners to design a customized approach for creating and implementing individual, organizational, or community change. CCSR staff use techniques that are based on both years of direct personal experience in Kansas and well-established research and evaluation findings from leadership, organizational, and community collaboration literature. CCSR staff work with a passion to strengthen the health and well-being of Kansas through the following services.
We provide leadership development training and coaching to strengthen individual abilities within organizational and community settings.
We provide organizational capacity building that help staff, volunteers, and board members set direction, create strategies, work together more effectively, and monitor their progress.
We provide community-based consultation to assist Kansas communities as they collaborate to identify and address pressing issues, foster community pride, and create new opportunities for healthy growth and development. We work with multiple sectors, including business, nonprofits, faith-based organizations, government, and education.
We provide research and evaluation that utilizes contemporary and well-established community-based methods that are customized to the needs of Kansas programs and initiatives with a mind for improving their effectiveness.
Finally, our Mental Health initiative capitalizes upon the above mentioned activities. It is a 10-plus year initiative designed to strengthen the effectiveness and efficiency of the Kansas mental health system through partnership between mental health consumers, mental health providers, state government, and other university partners.