Steps Involved in Undertaking a Community Assessment Free Sample

Question: Discuss about the Steps Involved in Undertaking a Community Assessment. Answer: Introduction: To provide the healthcare related services to the community, it is necessary to understand the community. Community assessment is one of the best methods to understand the community. Outcomes of the community assessment would be helpful in comprehending exact requirements of the community. It also would be helpful in knowing resources available with the community to address the health issue. This knowledge of the requirements and resources can be used to advantageously plan and provide healthcare services to the community (Guzys and Petrie, 2013). Community assessment can be effectively carried out by following specific steps. These steps are discussed in this article. Steps in Community Assessment: Before initiating community assessment it is very much required to decide upon specific issues to be addressed. This decision on specific scope would be helpful in target specific planning of the assessment. In healthcare sector, most of the issues are interrelated. Hence, there should be specific approach to go with individual issue or all issues at a time. Factors helpful in defining the scope are demographics (income, ethnicity, culture and population of targeted age), communities helping people and their services, funding resources for the community services, needs of the local people, strategies available to address the issue, benefits of these strategies, government approach towards these issues, volunteer group in the community, gaps in addressing the issue and willingness of the community people to address the issue (Gross et al., 2016; Murphy, 2012). Decide to Go Solo or Collaborate: After the final decision on goal and scope of the issue to be addressed, next logical step is to assess resources available to carry out the community assessment. If resources like time, finance, skills, techniques and human resources are sufficient to carry out the community assessment, then community assessment can be carried out on solo basis. If these resources are not enough, then collaboration is the best option. Collaboration with the volunteers, consultants and other organizations would definitely be helpful in improving quality and outcome of the community assessment. Collaboration increases engagement of more community participants in the assessment planning and implementation. It also incorporates more resources which would be helpful in answering important questions in the assessment. It would establish relationship with different stakeholders. It would be helpful in interpreting findings of the assessment. In collaboration there should be provision for the memorandum of understanding (MOU) because each and every stakeholder should completely understand importance of their contribution in assessment process. MOU should clearly mention key responsibilities of each and every stakeholder. Details of each participants should be mentioned in MOU like name of the organization, name and designation of the representative of the organization, actions to be taken by the organization, resources to be contributed by the organization and deadlines for the completion of the task (Schifferdecker et al., 2016; Murphy, 2012). Collect Data: Collection of the data is one of the most important steps in the community assessment because outcome measures and interpretation of the community assessment completely depends on the collection of data. Two types of data like primary and secondary data should be collected for community assessment. Secondary data should be collected first and followed by primary data. Secondary data generally collected by other sources in the local community which would be useful for the community assessment. Subsequently, secondary data should be collected from sources outside the community. Attention should be given for the collection of quality data as compared to the quantity data. Primary data should be collected by the individual or organization involved in the community assessment. Primary data should specifically address the issue to be addressed in the community assessment. Primary data collection methods are generally used to address the issues which cannot be addressed with the collection of secondary data. Primary data gives clear understanding of issues to be addressed in the community assessment. Various well established methods are available for the collection of the primary data. These methods comprises of questionnaires, observation, focus groups, interviews and case studies. Based on the requirement of the community assessment, these methods can be used (Koo et al., 2012; Gross et al., 2016). Determine Key Findings, Set Priorities and Create an Action Plan: Key findings should be categorized to summarize the data and hence it can be effectively used in interpretation. Categories to be used for community assessment data are strengths, gaps, opportunities and challenges. Priority setting is a difficult task in the community assessment because there should be agreement among different stakeholders in the community assessment. Stakeholders in the community assessment may be from different disciplines and there may be differences in their views and opinions (Guzys and Petrie, 2013). Few barriers are there for priority setting. These barriers comprises of human problem, process problem, structure problem and institutional problem. These should be addressed for priority setting. After the completion of priority setting, next step is designing action plan. Action plan is the heart of the community assessment because whole outcome of the community assessment completely based on the action plan. Action plan should be based on the priorities. Acti on plan should specifically mention specific actions to be taken and deadlines for each action. Action plan should identify person responsible for specific action. Actions plan should set schedule and scheme for future meetings (Murphy, 2012; Koo et al., 2012). Share Your Findings: Data collected in the community assessment should be shared to the community members in a community meeting. For this meeting stakeholders and collaborators should also be invited. Prospective beneficiaries of the community assessment should attend this data sharing meeting on compulsory basis. Data can also be shared to press release in local media (Sines et al., 2015). Data can also be shared by publishing brochure. Brochure should include summary of data, interpretation of data and summary of important findings of community assessment. These brochures should reach to each and every member of the community. Through this brochure, message should be reached to community members that there is lot of intellectual and financial investment in finding the solution. Also, message should be given that lot of resources in the community is explored to find out the solution for the targeted issue. Report of the community based assessment should be published on the website (CDC, 2017). Conclusion: Goals of community assessment are to understand needs of the community members and its impact on them. These goals can be effectively achieved by incorporating valid steps in the community assessment. These steps proved useful in community assessment in diverse areas. These steps incorporate different stakeholders and provide integrated solution. In summary, these steps are useful in effective community assessment which would be helpful in growth and development of the community. References: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Community Health Assessment and Group Evaluation (CHANGE) action guide: Building a foundation of knowledge to prioritize community needs. 2017 Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dch/programs/healthycommunitiesprogram/tools/change/pdf/changeactionguide.pdf. Gross, M., Mediavilla, C., and Virginia, A. (2016). Five Steps of Outcome-Based Planning and Evaluation for Public Libraries. American Library Association. Guzys, D., and Petrie, E. (2013). An Introduction to Community and Primary Health Care. Cambridge University Press. Koo, D., Felix, K., Dankwa-Mullan, I., Miller, T., Waalen J. (2012). A call for action on primary care and public health integration. American Journal of Public Health, 102(3), S307S309. Murphy, F. (2012). Community Engagement, Organization, and Development for Public Health Practice. Springer Publishing Company. McMurray, A., and Clendon, J., (2015). Community Health and Wellness: Primary Health Care in Practice. Elsevier Health Sciences. Schifferdecker, K.E., Bazos, D.A., Sutherland, K.A., Ayers LaFave, L.R., Ruggles, L., Fedrizzi, R., and Hoebeke, J. (2016). A Review of Tools to Assist Hospitals in Meeting Community Health Assessment and Implementation Strategy Requirements. Journal of Health Management, 61(1), 44-56. Sines, D., Saunders, M., and Forbes-Burford, J. (2013). Community Health Care Nursing. John Wiley Sons