Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #113688

Michael A. Stoto, PhD¹, Sarah S. Myers, MPH², Susan G. Straus, PhD¹, Cate Bohn, MPH³, and Priti R. Irani, MS⁴. (1) Statistics group and RAND Health, RAND, 1200 South Hayes St., Arlington, VA 22202-5050, 703-413-1100 x5472, mstoto@rand.org, (2) Division of Health Policy & Clinical Effectiveness, Cincinnati Children's, 3333 Burnet Avenue, ML 5040, Cincinnati, OH 45229, (3) New York State Dept of Health, Public Health Info Group, CCH, Rm 750, Tower, ESP, Albany, NY 12237, (4) Public Health Information Group, New York State Department of Health, 750 Corning Tower, Albany, NY 12237

Community health assessments (CHA) are commonly prepared by local health departments, and in states such as New York, required on a regular basis. CHAs are used as a means of identifying and describing community health problems, gaps and strengths in services, and interventions to improve the health of the community. In order to improve the usefulness of CHAs to a variety of stakeholders, we performed a systematic literature review of studies/publications assessing the CHA process to identify factors and criteria for a useful CHA process and product. This review found no rigorous, systematic reviews of CHAs, nor any comprehensive summaries of CHA strengths, weaknesses, and outcomes, but did describe a range of common approaches. Based on this review, and with the cooperation of stakeholders in five New York counties and a national advisory panel, we developed a consensus list of usefulness criteria relating to the CHA document content (e.g. “allows comparisons with data from other communities or other appropriate benchmarks”), format (e.g. “uses a consistent format to present information on different topics in the report”), and impact (e.g. “serves as a resource to prioritize and plan services”). A web-based tool is being developed to assess the usefulness of CHAs and feed the results back to CHA developers in local health departments. This feedback will identify strengths and weaknesses of health departments' CHA process and products and provide links to information that would enable them to improve CHA usefulness.

Learning Objectives:

• 1. Identify key usefulness criteria relating to the Community Health Assessment document content.
• 2. Assess whether the criteria can be applied to their CHA document.
• 3. Understand the process by which these criteria were selected and next steps.

Keywords: Community Health Assessment, Community Participation

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.

Recorded presentation