Section 2: What Could Help YOUR Community?
Needs assessment
Now that you have a better understanding of the factors that can impact health, let’s explore ways that you and other community members can make positive changes to improve health in your community.
Let’s start by determining the greatest health needs in your community. There are lots of resources for doing this.
Community health improvement plan
Each county health department should have a community health improvement plan or community health needs assessment. Do an internet search using “community health improvement plan” or “community health needs assessment” and your county’s name and state. If you can find a recently updated plan, it will describe some of the community’s greatest health needs. If you can’t, there are other resources you can use.
Community health needs assessment
Is there a hospital or health system that serves your county? If there is, they should also have a recent community health needs assessment. Do an internet search using “community health needs assessment” and the name of the hospital or health system to find this resource.
County health rankings
Another good source of local data is the County Health Rankings. Search for your county and look at the health factors. As you compare health behaviors in your county with the state of Missouri and the United States, which factors are worse in your county than in the state or the nation? Out of the factors you identify, which could you make better by implementing a health project? For those factors, click the down arrow to the right. Click the link for “Evidence-informed strategies” for this behavior. Could you assemble a team to implement one of those strategies?
Healthy People 2030
Another resource for specific strategies to address health problems is Healthy People 2030.
- View the Leading Health Indicators, high-priority objectives that address major public health issues. Are any of those indicators interesting to you?
- Browse the Evidence-Based Resources. Look at the list of topics. Do any of them match up with health needs you see in the community?
All Things Missouri
The All Things Missouri website is a free, online platform designed to support decision-makers in accessing, analyzing and visualizing data about their local communities. It’s another resource to find statistics about the status of health in your community.
Missouri Hunger Atlas
The Missouri Hunger Atlas shows the extent of food insecurity across the state and assesses the performance of programs intended to help people struggling with hunger.
Qualitative data
Numbers don’t tell the whole story. Qualitative data is information you get by talking to people in the community. It is important to determine what changes could be most relevant, impactful and have support of community members. Is there a particular health concern that you often hear people talking about? If so, then that concern might be one of the biggest health needs in your community.
A general outline for guiding conversations to get more information about health needs could look like this:
- What are the biggest health challenges in the community? (high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, lack of places to be physically active, lack of access to healthy food, etc.)
- What resources already exist in the community to address this issue?
- What else needs to be done?
- Who needs to be involved? (people, organizations, partners, etc.)
- What resources are needed?
For example, if you hear people complain that there’s no good place in the community to exercise, you might use these questions to find out more:
- Where can you be active in your community?
- What challenges do you or others in your community face when it comes to being physically active?
- What opportunities exist to improve physical activity in your community?
- Who needs to be involved? (people, organizations, partners, etc.)
- What resources are needed?
If you would like help organizing a community conversation to determine health needs, find out if there is an Extension Community Development specialist who can assist.
Write down some of your community’s needs.