Issue: Since the enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, non-profit hospitals are required to conduct periodic community health needs assessments. These assessments provide organizations with a snapshot of community strengths, deficiencies and resources. We offer a collaborative model other communities can use to conduct community health needs assessments.

Description: This session reports on one community’s experience conducting a community-based health needs assessment. We explain the process used from conception, execution and the creation and distribution of deliverables. Key players included a large non-profit health system, an area public health department, a social work program at a local public university and other community partners leveraged by these key players.

Lessons Learned: The greatest lesson learned was that when needs assessments are conducted in collaboration with community partners, the benefits to residents and service providers are innumerable. Collaboration reduced unnecessary costs, built on the strengths of each partner and yielded a stronger and richer response from the community.

Recommendations: Based on our experiences we recommend others allot sufficient time to conduct similar assessments. We also recommend others consider a more multi-faceted sampling plan to capture responses from individuals in the community. Our study relied on data acquired through 22 focus groups and an electronic survey of over 1,000 individuals. Finally, we suggest others identify community partners with access to special populations (such as non-English speaking individuals) as early in the process as possible. We provide our ideas on how to improve future assessments with consideration of these areas.