Developing a Standardized Community Health Assessment Process

Background: Community health assessments help to identify health issues within communities.  Assessments also allow organizations to measure progress toward community health improvement goals.  In fall 2012, leaders of a federal public health organization identified the need to develop standardized community health assessment processes.  These processes would serve to address organizational issues related to failed and incomplete assessments.  Prior to the initiation of this project, quality and rates of assessment completion were inconsistent.  Additionally, completeness of assessments varied as staff utilized several different assessment models.  Barriers to assessment were identified as the lack of training, support and resources. 

Description: This presentation will describe standardized process development activities and actions taken to eliminate barriers to assessment completion.  Methods utilized to leverage resources and improve staff capacity for effectively performing associated tasks will also be described. 

Lessons Learned: The development of standardized assessment processes served to improve data collection and reporting activities.  Actions taken to improve staff capacity to complete assessments greatly contributed to the sustainability of this process change; actions taken included mitigation of barriers to assessment and leveraging enabling factors. Additional benefits of this initiative included facilitation of local health department accreditation efforts and an increased capacity to measure the impact of an Enterprise-wide community health initiative.  

Implications: Hospitals, public health organizations and community-based agencies have a vested interest in community health assessment activities and findings. Lessons learned from this initiative can inform their efforts to improve the quality and reliability of these assessments.