Community health needs assessment

How do you do a needs assessment for a community?
Interviews, focus groups, and surveys are great data collection tools that will help you understand the perceived and expressed needs of your community.
Surveys are efficient at collecting lots of information, and they empower participants to get involved in community development..
Why do we need a health assessment?
Health assessments are usually structured screening and assessment tools used in primary care practices to help the health care team and patient develop a plan of care.
Health assessment information can also help the health care team understand the needs of its overall population of patients..
Why is a community needs assessment important?
A community needs assessment identifies the strengths and resources available in the community to meet the needs of children, youth, and families.
The assessment focuses on the capabilities of the community, including its citizens, agencies, and organizations..
Questions to ask when assessing health needs
1. What is the problem?
2. What is the size and nature of the problem?
3. What are the current services?
4. What do patients want?
5. What are the most appropriate and effective (clinical and cost) solutions?
6. What are the resource implications?
A community assessment is a systematic way of identifying the needs and resources of a community by gathering statistical data, soliciting perspectives of community members and collecting information about service providers and other community resources (Samuels et al., 1995).
The goal of a needs assessment is to help educators identify, understand, and prioritize the needs that districts and schools must address to improve performance.

A community health assessment, also known as community health needs assessment, refers to a state, tribal, local, or territorial health assessment that identifies key health needs and issues through systematic, comprehensive data collection and analysis.

A Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) is a systematic process involving the community to identify and analyze community health needs. The process provides a way for communities to prioritize health needs, and to plan and act upon unmet community health needs. CHNAs may be conducted by a variety of organizations.

What is a Community Health Improvement Plan?

A community health improvement plan (or CHIP) is a long-term, systematic effort to address public health problems based on the results of community health assessment activities and the community health improvement process

A plan is typically updated every three to five years

What should be included in a community needs assessment?

A community needs assessment should focus on a particular geographic area, sectors within that area such as health care and work sites, and community components to assess within each sector such as nutrition, chronic disease management, and tobacco use

Community mobilization is an attempt to bring both human and non-human resources together to undertake developmental activities in order to achieve sustainable development.

Community health needs assessment

How do you do a needs assessment for a community?

Why do we need a health assessment?

Why is a community needs assessment important?

Questions to ask when assessing health needs

What is a Community Health Improvement Plan?

What should be included in a community needs assessment?