HLTH 303- Lecture Notes

September 28th Lecture Notes What can we learn by assessing needs? - Community demographics: population, ages, languages spoken, education - Current health problems - Including physical, mental, emotions;, social, and environmental - Causes of health problems (the determinants of health) - Which community members have the most urgent needs (priority populations) - How best to meet the community needs - What resources are available to address these health problems? - Example: Community expertise, organizations, funding, active city council, etc. - Resources are there that are invisible or haven’t been mobilized - Which needs your organization can address - These are the challenges / no easy answer to this - Try to determine what is needed / what the problem is - How we will assess the effectiveness of the program when it starts running Types of Needs Assessments- - Felt - Expressed - What we look and what we see - Example: people begging for money on the street - Normative - What the experts are saying - Comparative - Versus another population, how bad is one population doing (how much worse) - Example: Low income kids are not doing as good as compared to high income kids Interview Types - Interview is a conversation with a purpose (can ask both open and close ended questions) - Can occur via: - In-person - Phone - Panel - Informal - Virtual - Challenges - Time intensive - What do all of these having in common? - They are all self-report (surveys, interviews, questionnaires) - Hoe else do we know what people - Observations - We can observe behavior - We can watch people behaviour and get a good sense on why they engage in that behavior