Lesson 2
Activity 1: Conducting a Needs Assessment
Based on what you have learned about conducting a needs assessment, and the community you have determined to use, design a needs assessment survey. Use the checklist to help focus your survey.
Activity 2: Determine who will complete the survey and how it will be conducted. Your team will carry out the survey with the identified population. Be sure that the population is appropriate for the survey and for the assessment that the chosen community needs.
Activity 3: Conducting Focus Groups
Together develop standardized interview questions to use with focus groups to determine needs of the community. Use the checklist and examples to help focus your discussion.
Be sure that the focus group questions are relevant to the problem and audience.
Project Assignment:
Conduct a needs assessment of a chosen community (may be local, a city, or even a state). The needs assessment should be thorough and follow the guide in the Community Tool Box
It should also include a survey of a minimum of 20 participants in the targeted audience and a focus group.
Task 2
Review examples of community needs assessments:
City of Portsmouth Health Needs Assessment and
Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters needs Assessment
Assessment done for a local children’s hospital, actually performed by a contractor. Note the level of detail compared with the Portsmouth City document.
Review Conducting Needs Assessment Surveys
Take a look at some other examples of community health assessments by “Googling” Community Health Assessment and peruse some of the top needs/health threats noted. Do you notice any trends? Write up a short list of Health threats common to all these assessments.
no plagiarism, APA and REferences
Answer preview
Alcohol and substance abuse also feature in a significant number of community health needs assessments. The health concern features both in the lives of adults and children from diverse backgrounds. Adults yield significantly high numbers of substance abuse in the country due to many factors ranging from using substances as coping mechanisms to feeding into societal trends that encourage unhealthy indulgences as pleasure. While some children also indulge in drug and substance abuse, a significant chunk of them are often victims of the toxic environments created by the adults around them who abuse alcohol and other substances.
Finally, the community needs assessments gravitate towards establishing social determinants of healthcare within the respective study populations. Such evaluations need to highlight the factors that make some people more susceptible to particular health complications
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