Community Health Needs Assessment

Community Health Needs Assessment



Concepts and principles of health needs assessment
Defining “health” and “need”
This pack uses a holistic model of health, emphasizing the social, economic and cultural
factors that affect health as well as individual behaviour. The concept of “need” used in this
pack incorporates those needs felt and expressed by local people as well as those defined by
professionals. It moves beyond the concept of demand and takes account of people’s
capacity to benefit from health care and public health programmes.
Factors affecting health
Health is affected by a number of factors:

 the physical environment in which people live, such as the quality of the air they
breathe and the water they drink;

 the social environment – the level of social and emotional support people receive
from friends and/or family;

 poverty, a significant factor worldwide, which shortens and reduces enjoyment of
life;

 behaviour and lifestyle – for example, smoking causes lung cancer and coronary
heart disease so a reduction in this behaviour will reduce the disease; and

 family genetics and individual biology – if you come from a healthy family you
have a better chance of staying well.
This pack will encourage the nurse to consider all these risk factors in relation to a


community and make an assessment of their importance.

Involving the community
It is assumed that the nurse using this pack has responsibility for providing nursing
services to a caseload of individual patients and a wider responsibility for improving the
health of the community.
The pack also assumes that the nurse wishes to work in partnership with local people and
will be looking for ways to involve others in her/his work. Community needs assessment
incorporates many of the principles of community development (Appendix 1), which has
been defined as: “…a way of tackling a community’s problems by using the energy and
leadership of the people who live there” (Thomas 1995).
Involving other professionals and agencies
If people feel involved in developing a local health plan they will be more committed to
putting it into action. It is therefore important that all those who will be involved in using
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the plan are also involved in the health needs assessment process. For the nurse this means
collaborating with other professionals and the local community. Nurses will also need to
agree with their employers on the flexibility and autonomy to change their work patterns
according to the needs identified through the community needs assessment process.