Who's who in the crew? Exploring participant involvement in the Active Living Coalition

• Focus groups were administered to capture different expressions of participant involvement in a health and wellness coalition.
• Six types of participation were identified: “newcomer”, “silent participant”, “connector”, “helper”, “visionary resource sharer”, and “worker bee”.
• Health coalitions should invest time in identifying participants’ interests and niches in order to maximize human and social capital.

Health coalitions serve as an important “vehicle” to strengthen horizontal and vertical ties between organizations, community groups, and individuals whose intent and purpose is to improve wellness. Having a strong and diverse group of participants is essential for highly effective coalitions to carry out their mission in an organized and participatory manner. However, the extent that individuals become involved in coalition operations and activities remains ambiguous. A grounded theory approach was used to explore expressions of participant involvement of a local health coalition known as the Active Living Coalition (ALC). Open, axial, as well as domain and taxonomic coding were used to analyze transcripts from four focus groups (n = 37 participants) in order to develop a participant continuum that captured six network aggregates within the coalition. Findings suggest that participation, for the most part, was heterogeneous and ever-changing given the expectations of the level of partnership that best individuals’ personal and professional interests. Differentiating the type of participants in health coalitions can help coalition leaders more successfully “manage” new and existing relationships. Findings imply that health coalitions can maximize coalition capacity by drawing upon the full range of potential human and material resources by further understanding the types of individuals that make up their network.