Communities of Influence
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How does a community of influence come into being and stay alive?

Our phrase "communities of influence" was partly inspired by Etienne Wenger's work on communities of practice. However, a community of influence is different from a community of practice. Its purpose includes the sharing of experience and knowledge, but goes beyond that. Each of the communities described in our book was created to develop a collective voice in order to influence policy and practice in its particular field.

An example: improving care for people after cancer treatment

The Consequences of Cancer and its Treatment collaborative group (CCaT) is a community of influence created to improve services for cancer survivors in the UK. This innovative group includes a dozen senior clinician researchers from England and Scotland.
See CCaT web pages
on the Macmillan Cancer Support website
.

Top tips for developing a community of influence