The Process To Develop a Meaningful Community Health Assessment in New York State

Abstract

Conducting and producing a meaningful Community Health Assessment (CHA) is an important and essential public health service and a mandatory biennial activity for New York State's (NYS) Local Health Departments. The Assessment Initiative project has allowed the NYS Department of Health to better understand and identify strategies to strengthen CHAs and to develop training, education, and technical assistance programs. The Assessment Initiative project has benefited from participation, coordination, and sharing of resources and expertise with other community health improvement initiatives in NYS, including those that emphasize collaborative approaches to health improvement, workforce development, and expanding access to data.

Using More Activities to Address Health Disparities

“…31 In our sample, 38.3% of the LHDs served rural populations in 2008 but LHDs in urban jurisdictions were far more likely to have used more types of strategies to address disparities. 33 Our study was limited, in part, by the data available in that the 8 response choices provided as activities to address health disparities do not provide enough depth or detail to indicate how or to what extent an activity was carried out. The top executives in small rural LHDs may particularly benefit from training in strategic thinking about public health programs, evaluating effectiveness, and how to focus their efforts on and with particularly marginalized populations because they may also have less opportunity for learning from and sharing strategies with their LHD leader peers.…”

Factors Affecting the Progress of Community Health Assessment and Improvement Activities in Kansas

“…In an assessment of New York State CHAs, 10 LHDs showed the greatest strength in explaining the demographics and health status of their local population and identifying priority health issues and at-risk populations but displayed difficulty in describing the local health care environment and elucidating the role of key stakeholder organizations to address priorities and contribute to crafting objectives and action plans. Clearly, obstacles to establishing and maintaining an ongoing CHA-CHIP process exist.…”

“…Community partner participation in the assessment and planning of a CHA has been advocated previously. 10,18 Moreover, Solet et al 19 inferred that an effective CHA engages and motivates policy makers and stakeholders and leads to the development of new partnerships.…”

“…17 In general, the final CHA profile, which parallels recommended quality characteristics, was derived through multiple methods. 2,10,18 Although it has been advocated, 10,19 concern about reaching all segments of the community was voiced, which suggests Copyright © 2015 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. Unauthorized reproduction of this article is prohibited.…”