DESIGNING NEEDS AND ASSETS ASSESSMENT

The first essential step in the process of designing successful public health programs is to understand the needs that motivate these programs and the assets that can be brought to bear on developing them. The purpose of this course is to enable students to perform specific steps in a needs and assets assessment and to plan how to facilitate participation by those who will be affected by a resulting program. The assessment process encompasses two main components: an epidemiologic, behavioral, and social analysis of a community and population at risk for a health-related problem; and an effort to understand the character of the community, its members, and its strengths.

At the start of the course, we will discuss pre-assessment work which includes planning to put together a work group for planning the needs and assets assessment. We will touch on essential elements of encouraging participation, work-group management, and culturally sensitive practice. Simultaneously, we will create a logic model of a selected health problem using Step 1 of Intervention Mapping which employs an adapted version of the PRECEDE part of the PRECEDE-PROCEED model. Using this model, students will fully define their population and context for their assessments, posing questions, and choosing methods and data sources for completing each part of the logic model of the problem selected (heretofore referred to as the Logic of Risk). At the same time, we will cover various approaches and data sources for assessing a community’s strengths/assets. Finally, we will discuss post-assessment tasks including setting priorities and setting program goals for health and quality of life outcomes.