2. Developing Your Community Profile
When you have studied this session, you should be able to:
• Define and use correctly all of the key words printed in bold.
• Describe the main features and purposes of a community
profile.
• Describe the different types of data that you may use in
developing or updating your community profile.
3. What is a community profile?
A community profile is the analyzed and reported results of the data collected by a
community survey, which describes a combined picture or profile of the population in your
community.
kebele boundaries
the numbers of people and households
the ages and genders of the population
birth and death rates
income and socioeconomic advantage/disadvantage data
social/community needs
access to services (e.g. health, education, water supply)
knowledge, attitudes and beliefs on important health topics affecting the
population.
4.
5. What is the purpose of the community profile?
• To collect baseline data for understanding health and health-related
problems in your community.
• Baseline data means the data that is collected at the start of any
programme
• The baseline data will help you in the planning, implementation
and evaluation of your health programmes.
• It may also help you in identifying problems that could be further
investigated and addressed through small-scale research projects
6. cont
The profile may also shed light on a wide range of issues such
as:
Are there any free or low-cost health facilities for drought-
prone areas?
Are there graduates of model households who can teach other
families how to promote their health and prevent common
diseases?
Are there voluntary community health-service providers who
can be used more effectively?
What percentage of the children has been fully immunized at
one year old?
The community profile may also highlight the status of the
housing, and the physical environment surrounding it.
It may contain information on the status of public safety in the
7. What types of data will you collect for a
new community profile?
• Demographic data
• Epidemiological data
• Health service data
• Data on knowledge, attitudes and practice
(also known as behavioural data)
• Data on physical characteristics in the
environment.
8. Demographic data
• It include births, deaths, age, income,
education, gender, occupation, family size,
housing, ethnicity, language and religion.
9. Epidemiological data
Counts of illnesses and disability (morbidity
data)
Counts of deaths from specific causes
(mortality data)
Risk factors for health problems (i.e. factors
such as smoking or exposure to toxic waste
that increase the likelihood of a disease or
disability
occurring)
Health promoting factors (e.g. balanced diet,
physical activity).
10. Health service data
• Health service data tells you what health services are
available in the kebele and what use is made of these
services by the population.
• The purpose of collecting health service data is to
identify strategies that improve the access of every
member of the community to effective healthcare and
health promotion.
11. Cont
By collecting health service data on coverage you will be better able to
understand:
Do those individuals with healthcare needs get the necessary health
interventions? For example, what access to malaria treatment drugs is
available for patients who develop malaria?
What determines the probability of an individual receiving a needed health
intervention? Is it their age, their gender, their social circumstances, etc.?
What are the barriers preventing the whole population receiving the
required health services? Are the barriers mainly financial problems that
prevent access to services, or is there a shortage of trained personnel, drugs
or equipment?
12. Cont
• What specific health services are offered to the
community and where are the gaps in services?
• What is the pattern of healthcare-seeking behaviour of the
community?
• Healthcare-seeking behaviour describes how people
interact with the health service and health workers.
• For example, people may be reluctant to seek help from
the formal health service or they may be regularly seeking
attention from health personnel.
13. Data on knowledge, attitudes and
practice (KAP)
• Collecting data on the behaviour or practices of
people in your community and on their
knowledge, attitudes, beliefs or opinions about
major public health problems can be useful in
developing baseline data for health education
and health promotion interventions.
14. Cont
• For example, knowledge of how local people think
tuberculosis, HIV, sexually transmitted infections and
diarrheal , diseases are spread in the community will
help you to focus your health education interventions
on the areas of greatest ignorance or need.
