Conducting a Community

Assessment

Activity Book

Conducting a Community Assessment Activity Book

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Activity 1a:

Planning for your Community Needs Assessment

1. What is the purpose of the community needs assessment? __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________

2. Who will conduct the needs assessment?

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________ 3. Who will use the results from the needs assessment?

User How will they use the information?

4. What questions will the needs assessment answer?

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

5. When is the needs assessment to be done by? _______________________

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6. What resources do you have? People:

__________________________________________________________________ Money:

__________________________________________________________________ Time:

__________________________________________________________________

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Activity 1b:

Beginning to Describe Your Community

Phase I: Preassessment

What are the physical boundaries of the community or target area? __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ Describe the target population. Use key characteristics for defining who is and is not a member of the target population. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ What are things that you have to keep in mind when asking questions of this community? (Think of reading level/skills, cultural issues, historical factors, health knowledge)

__________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ Use the US Census website or Google Maps to create a map of your community and its boundaries.

Census: http://factfinder.census.gov/jsp/saff/SAFFInfo.jsp?_pageId=thematicmaps&_submenuId=maps_0&geoID=

Google Maps: http://maps.google.com/

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Activity 2:

Community Asset Inventory

Using the Individual Asset Inventory Tool and the Association Asset Inventory Tool, what are your community assets?

Individual (e.g. healthcare providers, construction workers, transportation services): __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ Association (e.g. religious, service, or recreational organizations, civic groups): __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________

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Activity 3:

Key Informants

Who are the key informants for this assessment? (list role of these individuals and what information you hope to gain from them) 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. What are some questions that you would ask your key informants? 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

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Activity 4:

Creating a Community Profile

Phase II: Assessment

Collecting Secondary Data:

Use the attached instruction guide “Finding Health and Community Data” to help conduct your Community Analysis and fill out the table below.

Source: Where will you find the data for the community profile? Data: What information did you find?

Community Background

History Geography

Demographics

Sources:

Data:

Health and Social Systems

Facilities Manpower Social assistance

programs

Sources:

Data:

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Health Status

Behavior risks Common diseases Causes of death

Sources:

Data:

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Activity 5:

Primary Data Collection: Methods and Purpose

Collecting Primary Data: What are the key questions you want answered from the community? 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. What methods will you use to collect data for the community assessment?

Method Purpose Example:

Focus Group

Focus groups will allow us to talk with a small group of community members that have similar characteristics or experiences at the same time. The group setting will allow them to exchange experiences and add-on to other’s answers. We hope this will provide more detailed answers from each focus group that are relevant to their shared characteristics or experiences.

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Activity 6:

Searching for Data Collection Questions

Use the attached instruction guide “Sources for Questionnaires” to help fill out the table below.

Method Topic Question

Example:

Survey

Family Planning

Source: BRFSS Question:

Are you currently taking birth control pills?

1=Yes

2=No

Source: Question:

Source: Question:

Source: Question:

Source: Question:

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Source: Question:

Source: Question:

Finding Health and Community Data

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The following is a series of examples to take you through the steps of searching and collecting data for your community analysis and to help familiarize you with a few resources. OASIS:

Use to search for: Demographic data

Demographic Profiles – Clusters neighborhoods by socio-economic status.

Provides a brief description of the population generally living in each color-coded

socio-economic cluster.

Finding Health and Community Data

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Use OASIS to Search for: Health Data about Pregnancy and Birth Rates Step 1: Click on “Maternal/Child Health” under “OASIS Web Query Tool”

Step 2: Select Measure (Pregnancies & Pregnancy Rates), Age (All Mothers Ages), Time, Geography (Fulton Health District for example), Race, and Ethnicity. Then click on “Get Data!”

Finding Health and Community Data

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Step 3: Use Data! Pregnancy Rates are circled in red. If you would like to compare different ages, races, or locations, just repeat step 2

with the different measures.

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Using OASIS and BRFSS to Search for: Health data for smoking tobacco Step 1: Go to OASIS homepage Step 2: Click on “Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey”

Step 3: Select the Behavior Category (Risk Behaviors) and Behavior (Smoking), click on “Get Data!”

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Step 4: Select the question you would like answered. In this case either “Four level smoking status” or “Adults who are current smokers” Step 5: Use Data! Chose the row that represents your district, for example “Macon” Choose the percentages of interest to you. Are you interested in the total

percentage of smokers or divided by gender or race?

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BRFSS: Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System **Using BRFSS through OASIS allows you to look at data according to District. If you go directly through BRFSS, data is only available at the state-level (link to this data is marked with an “A” below). If you use the SMART: BRFSS City and County Data, data is available for three overall Metropolitan areas in Georgia: Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, Augusta-Richmond County, and Chattanooga (link to this data is marked with a “B” below). Choose which database to use according to the area you want the data to include. It may be helpful to look at all three. http://www.cdc.gov/brfss/

A B

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National Cancer Institute:

http://statecancerprofiles.cancer.gov/ **State Profiles provide information according to cancer site. Data is organized in a variety of ways, by table, graphs/maps, or additional support data. Data includes death rates, incidence rates, prevalence rates, etc.

Generating a “Quick Profile” will provide you a list of information including

Incidence Rates and Death Rates for each County in your state.

Comparison Tables allow you to compare trends/rates for a specific County

against either the national or state data.

Graphs and Maps present data over a period of time or as a comparison.

Support Data provides additional information of interest including Census

demographic information for counties and states.

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Cancer Control P.L.A.N.E.T. Sponsored by the National Cancer Institute and provides a series of steps for

developing a comprehensive cancer control plan or program. The first of these

steps is a link to the State Cancer Profiles by the NCI.

Also provides information according to cancer topic.

Much of the data on this site is also found on the NCI site, however it also

provides helpful resources for making partnerships and references for effective

intervention approaches.

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Resources for Health and Community Data:

• National Center for Health Statistics (CDC)

– http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/

• Healthy People 2010 (CDC)

– http://wonder.cdc.gov/DATA2010/index.htm

• American FactFinder (Browse Census data)

– http://factfinder.census.gov/home/saff/main.html

• Georgia Department of Community Health, Division of Public Health

– http://health.state.ga.us/healthdata/index.asp

• Georgia Community Indicators

– http://www.dca.state.ga.us/commind/default.asp

• Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS)

– http://www.cdc.gov/brfss/

• National Health Interview Survey (CDC)

– http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhis/nhis_questionnaires.htm

• OASIS

– http://oasis.state.ga.us/oasis/index.aspx

• Kids Count

– http://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/bystate/StateLanding.aspx?state=GA

• Kaiser State Health Facts

– http://www.statehealthfacts.kff.org/

• Trust for America’s Health, Georgia State Data

– http://healthyamericans.org/

• State Cancer Profiles

– http://statecancerprofiles.cancer.gov/

Sources for Questionnaires

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Examples of how to find questions for surveys or questionnaires that have been previously used and found to be effective. BRFSS: Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System http://www.cdc.gov/brfss/questionnaires/questionnaires.htm

Complete Questionnaires provides both English and Spanish versions of the

Questionnaire, by year. Each questionnaire is designed as an interview and includes the

interviewer’s script with all of the questions and prompts.

BRFSS Modules Used is a yearly list of additional questions that were asked in each

state and for each health topic category

BRFSS Questions Archive is a database of all the questions ever used. It can be searched

according to category. This may be the most helpful tool if you are looking for questions

for a particular health topic. See the example below for searching for questions about

Family Planning:

o Select the Question Category

o Narrow by year if you would like.

o Click “Go”

Sources for Questionnaires

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o View the full questions and their answer options by clicking on the questions

that are relevant to your questionnaire

Sources for Questionnaires

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NHIS: National Health Interview Survey http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhis/nhis_questionnaires.htm **The questionnaires for the NHIS are not as user-friendly as the BRFSS questionnaires, however do provide sample questions that have been tested and approved.

Click on “1997-Present Data and Related Documentation” if you want more

recent questions

Click on “1996-Prior Data and Related Documentation” if you want older

questions

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Questionnaires are available in both English and Spanish for each year

Click on the language you would like in order to access the questionnaires

The following screen will appear:

Each link is to a set of questions for a different topic, for example:

o gadult.pdf is the questionnaire for adults in general

o gcancer.pdf is a questionnaire about all aspects of cancer (risk,

screening, etc)

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YRBS: Youth Risk Behavior Survey http://www.cdc.gov/HealthyYouth/yrbs/questionnaire_rationale.htm

This link provides the questionnaires for the 2011 survey as well as rational

for each question.

Select the questionnaire according to age group (High School or Middle

School), or choose the 2011 National High School Questionnaire, with

includes additional questions