The document provides guidance on conducting a community health assessment and designing a community health project. It discusses assessing the community to identify health problems, prioritizing issues, analyzing contributing factors and risk factors to set goals and objectives. Strategies are then determined to address objectives and work towards the overall goal of reducing risk factors. Implementing, monitoring and evaluating the project is also covered. The intended outcome is for students to plan and conceptualize their own community health project based on a case study.

1. COMMUNITY ASSESSMENT,
COMMUNITY HEALTH PROJECT
PLANNING, IMPLEMENTATION,
MONITORING AND EVALUATION

2. Overview of Session
The students will be taught
on how to do a
community assessment,
prioritization of a specific
health problem,
designing a community
health program as well as
its implementation,
monitoring and
evaluation.

3. At the end of the session, the student
should be able to conduct their own
community assessment based on a
hypothetical
community case and
they must be able to
conceptualize and plan
a health project on
The hypothetical
community assigned
to them.

4. COMMUNITY ASSESSMENT
A community assessment
is an exercise by which a
collaborative
partnership gathers
information on the
current strengths,
concerns, and
conditions of children,
families, and the
community.

5. • The information comes from
many sources- especially parents
and family members- and is
elicited by many techniques,
including interviews, focus
groups, and scanning
demographic data collected by
local agencies.

7. • Because many types of partners
participate in a community
assessment- strategic planners ,
program staff, administrators,
teachers, parents, and other
community members- the
resulting information is broad,
accurate, and useful.

8. Community
assessments
focus on:
• local assets,
• resources, and
• activities as well
as gaps, barriers,
or emerging
needs.

9. The process of identifying and
appraising this information will help
your collaborative partnership.
• Clearly understand the context in
which families live and the issues
families want to address; locate
hidden strengths or underutilized
resources that could be developed.

10. • Determine which resources could
contribute to comprehensive strategies,
and in what way;
• Design effective, collaborative strategies
that engage children and families
because they respond to real and
important conditions; and
• Empower families and community
members by giving them a role in
designing and implementing the
strategies.

11. Process of conducting a
community assessment involves
(1)Scanning the community to locate
existing information,
(2)Developing a family focus
(3)Identifying community assets and the
degree to which they are accessible to
the people who can benefit from them
(4)Analyzing the information obtained
through the first three steps.

12. HEALTH PROJECT PLANNING
• Planning requires a critical
analysis of the problem to be
addressed.
• Problem analysis is important for
developing a goal and objectives
for the project that are realistic
and achievable.

13. • Once the goal and objectives are
set, strategies for achieving them
can be determined.
• Resources needed in the project,
and ways to obtain them, are then
identified.
• The planning process also includes
deciding how the project will be
managed, sustained and evaluated.

14. Major steps in planning,
sustaining and evaluating
a health promotion
project.

15. Step 1: Identify the issues or health
problems in the community
Needs assessment
• Clarifying need is an essential part of
deciding what issue or problem the
project will address.
• The term ‘needs assessment’ is used to
describe a process of collecting
information that will give a good
indication of the priority needs of a
community.

16. • It provides an opportunity for
the community to become
involved in the planning from
the beginning.
• It helps with allocating resources
and making decisions about
where to start with health
promotion work.

17. Classifying Needs
When undertaking a needs assessment, it
is important to consider that needs will be
thought of differently, depending on
whom you consult.
Needs are sometimes classified as:
• Normative needs
• Felt needs
• Expressed needs
• Comparative needs

18. Normative Needs
• A discrepancy between an
individual/s or group/s
present state and a given
norm or standard

19. Felt Need
• A felt need is an individual desire or want
that an individual has to improve either his
or her performance.
• Asking people what they want is frequently
used in identifying felt needs that attributes
may influence what people say they want.
• When searching for felt needs, designers
must be aware of needs that are motivated
by a desire other than performance
improvement.

20. Expressed Need or Demand
• A felt need becomes an expressed need
when people put what they want into
actions. For example, if more students sign
up for an online course than the seat limit,
then there may be an expressed need for
more sections of the course. Expressed
needs are often identified in suggestion
boxes and in-house publications with a
question-and-answer or suggestion
column.

21. Comparative Need
• A discrepancy between what one
group has and what another group,
with similar characteristics, has. A
comparative need is present when
two groups with similar
characteristics do not receive a
similar service.

22. • Sharing the results of the needs assessment
with the community is a key part of the
planning process.
This process will:
• Raise community awareness about the
issues and possible underlying causes
• Stimulate discussion about ways to address
the issues
• Allows the community to be involved in
planning and decision-making about the
project

23. Consider baseline data
• Some of the information gathered during
the needs assessment may be able to be
uses as ‘baseline data’.
• Baseline data describe the situation or
condition at the time the project or
intervention starts.
• Data collected later during the
evaluation is then compared against the
baseline data to see the effect of the
project.

24. Step 2: Prioritize the Issues or
Health Problems
• At the end of Step 1, the project team
will have a list of major issues and
potential target groups for the project.
• There are always competing needs or
issues in any community.
• Limitations such as time and resources
mean that not everything can get
addressed.

25. • Issues will need to be prioritized.
• Needs and priorities vary from
individual to individual, family to
family, group to group.
• It is important to work out
criteria to sort out which issue
the project will address

26. Step 3. Identify risk factors and
set the goal for the project
• Risk factors- are any aspect of behavior,
society or the environment that are directly
linked to the health problem.
• Risk factors lead to or directly cause the
problem.
• Note that some risk factors can be
changed, while others are not able to be
modified, for example, family history of a
condition.

27. Example of risk factors:
• Eating high fat food (behavioural) and
having a family history of heart disease
(biological) are both risk factors for
heart disease, People can change their
food choices (modifiable) but not their
genetics (non-modifiable)
• Direct exposure to bacteria to bacteria
and germs (environmental) may be a
risk factor for diarrhea.

28. • Addressing a problem successfully will
require the project to focus on the
underlying causes or issues that led to the
problem in the first place.
• In other words, the goal and objectives of
a project need to relate to the underlying
causes or issues.
• Developing a clear and organized goal and
objectives that relate to each other
requires some critical analysis of the
problem.

29. Step 4: Determine contributing factors
and state objectives for the project
• Contributing factors- are any aspects of
behavior, society or the environment that
leads to the risk factors developing.
Contributing factors enable or reinforce
the risk factors. They can relate to
individual, financial, political,
educational, environmental, or other
issues.

30. Examples of contributing factors:
• Lack of knowledge about low fat diets
(educational) and high cost of low-fat foods
in the store (financial) are both
contributing factors to the risk factor
‘eating a high fat diet’
• Poor housing condition (environmental)
and lack of home hygiene (behavioral) are
both contributing factors to the risk factor’
exposure to bacteria and germs’

31. Developing the project goal and objectives
The Goal and Objectives:
• Make plan clear and focus that energies
of the project team
• Let people know what they can expect to
happen as a result of the project
• Are the basis for planning the evaluation
of the project

32. Goal
• The goal is about making changes to
the risk factors addressed by project
• The goal indicates what the planned,
longer term outcome of the project is
• It is also intended to inspire, motivate
and focus people and encourage team
cooperation.

33. Objectives
• Objectives state what changes the project
will make to the contributing factors.
• The objectives indicate what the impact
will be on the contributing factors during
the time frame of the project.
• The objectives are about what has to
change in the short term to get closer to
achieving the project goal.

34. • A well written ‘goal and
objectives’ state who will achieve
how much of what by when.
Developing a clear, achievable
goal and objectives requires good
baseline data

35. Step 5: Determine what strategies will be
• After the objectives are developed,
the strategies are determined.
• Strategies describe what it is that the
project team will do to try and make
the changes required to achieve the
objectives.
• Relationship between the goal,
objectives and strategies

36. • The process for planning a project
begins with the big picture (issue of
problem). It is an analysis of the big
picture issue that gives the
framework for developing the plan-
from the longer term goal, to more
specific objectives, down to the
actual strategies, and finally the
detail of individual actions.

37. Step 6: Develop the Action Plan
• Once the strategies of the project are
determined, the project team can
write the action plan. The action plan
includes all the specific activities,
large and small, that will need to be
done to implement each of these
activities, when they will be
completed and how they will be
evaluated.

38. • The more detail that is worked out for
strategies, the easier it will be to accurately
identify all the activities to be done.
• If the project is large, with many stages, it
may not be possible to detail all the
specific activities at the beginning of the
project.
• Detailed documentation is also important
for maintaining accountability within the
team and between the team and the
community or funding agency.

39. • The action plan will also list the
resources required to do the project
successfully. Resources will be required
throughout the whole project, from
needs assessment through putting
strategies into action to final report
writing.
• Resources can include human resources,
financial resources, materials, equipment
and venues, dates.

40. Step 7: Sustain the Project
• Planning for sustainability means thinking of
ways to keep the project (or important parts of
it) going after its official end. It then becomes
an ongoing part of community activity.
• Many factors can threaten sustainability of the
project. Project teams need to be on the
lookout for these factors and have a plan for
dealing with them. Sustainability needs to be
considered from the initial planning stages of a
project.

41. Step 8: Evaluate the project
Evaluating a project is about looking
critically at what is happening in the
project and making a judgment about
its value, worth or benefit (see the word
value in evaluate). Evaluation is
important because it can tell us:
• How the project is going
• What effect it is having
• What changes we need to make to
improve it

42. Major steps in planning,
sustaining and evaluating a health
promotion project.
1. Identify the issues or health problems
in the community.
2. Prioritize the issues or health problems
to identify the one that the project will
address.
3. Identify risk factors and set the goal for
the project

43. 4. Determine contributing factors
and state objectives for the
project
5. Determine what strategies will be
6. Develop the action plan for the
project. DO IT!
7. Sustain the project or keep the
project (or some parts of it) going
8. Evaluate the project

44. END.