LESSON 7

• Community Assessment


  An exercise by which a collaborative partnership gathers information on the current strengths, concerns, and conditions of children, families, and the community
• Community assessment


  Focuses on local assets, resources and activities as well as gaps, barriers or emerging needs
• Community Assessment Process


  1. Scanning the community to locate existing information

  2. Developing a family focus

  3. Identifying community assets and the degree to which they are accessible to the people who can benefit from them

  4. Analyzing the information obtained through the first three steps
• Program


  A series of coordinated related multiple projects that over extended time intended to achieve a goal
• Project


  • Has an established and specific objective
  • Has a defined life span with a beginning and an end
  • Usually the involvement of several departments and professionals
  • Has specific time, cost performance requirements
• Major steps in Planning, Sustaining and Evaluating a Health Promotion Project


  1. Identify the issues or health problems in the community

  2. Prioritize the issues or health problems to identify the one that the project will address

  3. Identify risk factors and set the goal for the project

  4. Determine contributing factors and state objectives for the project

  5. Determine what strategies will be

  6. Develop the action plan for the project

  7. Sustain the project or keep the project (or some parts of it) going

  8. Evaluate the project
• Needs Assessment


  Clarifying need is an essential part of deciding what issue or problem the project will address. It provides an opportunity for the community to become involved in the planning from the beginning and helps with allocating resources and making decisions about where to start with health promotion work.
• Types of Needs


  • Normative needs
  • Felt needs
  • Expressed needs
  • Comparative needs
• Baseline data


  Describe the situation or condition at the time the project or intervention starts. Data collected later during the evaluation is then compared against the baseline data to see the effect of the project.
• Risk factors


  Any aspect of behavior, society or the environment that are directly linked to the health problem and lead to or directly cause the problem
• Contributing factors


  Any aspects of behavior, society or the environment that leads to the risk factors developing. They enable or reinforce the risk factors.
• Goal


  The goal is about making changes to the risk factors addressed by the project. It indicates what the planned, longer term outcome of the project is.
• Objectives


  State what changes the project will make to the contributing factors. They indicate what the impact will be on the contributing factors during the time frame of the project.
• Strategies


  Describe what it is that the project team will do to try and make the changes required to achieve the objectives.
• Action plan


  Includes all the specific activities, large and small, that will need to be done to implement each of the strategies, when they will be completed and how they will be evaluated.
• Sustainability


  Planning for ways to keep the project (or important parts of it) going after its official end so it becomes an ongoing part of community activity.
• Evaluation


  Looking critically at what is happening in the project and making a judgment about its value, worth or benefit. It can tell how the project is going, what effect it is having, and what changes are needed to improve it.