Community health assessment (CHA) is crucial in bringing into light the issues that need to be addressed in a particular community. Communities indeed have numerous health issues that need to be addressed, but they cannot be addressed all at once, thus the need for prioritization. The community assessment Tool Kit is a crucial instrument as it helps in facilitating the prioritization process. The tool kit that ought to be completed every three years is a nine-step process that helps hospitals to identify community health concerns. Adolescent health is one of the community health concerns as outlined by Healthy People 2020 and could be analyzed through CHA.
The first step that guides the prioritization process for adolescent health is the reflection and strategizing in relation to community engagement. In this step, one is supposed to reflect on the previous CHA to establish what went well and those areas that need improvement. Adolescents make up about 22 per cent of the US population, and their health should be prioritized considering that they are prone to substance abuse, STIs and mental disorders (Healthy People 2020, 2019). It is important to review previous interventions to ensure that all loopholes are sealed for better health outcomes.
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Stakeholder identification and engagement is the next step in the CHA as it helps in creating trusting relationships within communities. Effective stakeholders’ collaboration ensures that communities can map the available assets and resources to deal with adolescent health needs (Association for Community Health Improvement, 2017). From here, the team can define the community in which the resources are to be used to have a scope for assessment and implementation strategies. In particular, it is essential to describe the geographic of community that is to be targeted in promoting adolescent health. This step helps in ensuring that there will be a proportional allocation of resources for a particular population.
Community Health Assessment tool kit focuses on the collection and analysis of both qualitative and quantitative data to understand the opinions of community stakeholders. Data collection and analysis helps to highlight the particular health needs regarding adolescent health such as substance abuse, STIs, among other health concerns. From here, the CHA team can move to the next step, which is prioritizing community health issues from the data collection and analysis step (Association for Community Health Improvement, 2017). Once the health needs are prioritized, the team can then adopt strategies to deal with the most pressing adolescent health need.
References
Association for Community Health Improvement. (2017). Community Health Assessment Toolkit . Retrieved on 18 December 2019, from www.healthycommunities.org/assesstoolkit
Healthy People 2020 (2019, December 18). Adolescent Health . Retrieved on 18 December 2019, from https://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/topics-objectives/topic/Adolescent-Health
