Needs Assessment

Question 1

What’s step 3 in the needs assessment (with framework)

Answer 1

3. Prioritising issues
   - Determine importance of health issues within population.
   - How many people affected, extent of the issue, barriers to change, has anything been done to address the issue.

Question 2

What’s step 7 in the needs assessment?

Answer 2

Evaluating outcomes
- Informing community of what happened as a result. Did you achieve you goals (why/why not), measure data and compare, determine how well or how much was achieved.

Question 3

What’s step 4 in the needs assessment

Answer 3

Setting goals
- Having a goal provides direction for any health promotion action and a target to work towards. Goals use SMART acronym, important anchor for any future planning and are important in evaluation of a program.

Question 4

What’s step 2 in the needs assessment

Answer 4

Analysis of the problem
- Gather data and information regarding the health issue.
- Describe characteristics and needs of the population, gather health status data, identifying and assessing risk and protective factors.

Question 5

What’s step 1 in the needs assessment?

Answer 5

Identifying health issues
- Identifying the population you are going to be studying describing key characteristics and need.
What specific population are you working with, how is this population different from others, who are you going to include, what resources re required.

Question 6

What’s step 6 in the needs assessment?

Answer 6

Developing action plans
- Action plan identifies what needs to be done to implement your strategies , make lists of step by step actions, develop a timeline and plan of what needs to be done in order and by who.

Question 7

What’s step 5 in the needs assessment?

Answer 7

Determining strategies
- Strategies describe what has to be done to achieve program objectives.
- Use a decision making model such as PABCAR to decide on a course of action. Research strategies used in previous work or other fields and decide if they could be applied in this situation. Ask community members what they think will work and determine strategies you believe will achieve your goals.

Question 8

What’s the purpose of a needs assessment?

Answer 8

-Addresses health inequities (prioritise health needs of the community)
-Engages the specific population, allows them to contribute to the plan (empowerment)
-Improves the use of allocated resources
-Uses the information to plan appropriate health interventions

Question 9

Definition of a needs assessment

Answer 9

Health needs assessment is a systematic examination of the health status indicators for a given population that is used to identify key problems and assets in a community. The ultimate goal of a health needs assessment is to develop strategies to address the community’s health needs and identified issues.

Question 10

Describe felt needs

Answer 10

Those which individuals or groups think or ‘feel’ need attention. These are collected via survey’s, face-to-face interviews with the community.

Question 11

Describe normative needs

Answer 11

Those based on expert findings or research. For example, what to the experts tell us or what does the research show on a particular health issue.

Question 12

Describe expressed needs

Answer 12

Those that are demanded by a community, they are collected by observations about a community’s use of facilities and services. E.g. what is the wait time to see a psych in a rural area.

Question 13

Describe comparative needs

Answer 13

Those that are determined by comparing one group with another. For example comparing one rural and remote community to another rural and remote community.