Assessment 101
So you want to learn a little more about Community Needs Assessments. You've come to the right place! Scroll down this page to learn more about what a Community Needs Assessment is, to see a simple five-step process to carrying out a Community Needs Assessment, and to access great resources that can provide you with all the information you might need to start the process in your own community.
What is a Community Needs Assessment?
Generally, a CNA is used to identify the key risk and protective factors, strengths and weaknesses, needs and resources of a specified community, organization, or group.
CNAs are a great way to accomplish the first two steps of the public health approach to preventing violence:
Define and monitor the problem
Identify key risk and protective factors
Implement and evaluate promising strategies
Assure widespread adoption
5 Steps of a Community Needs Assessment
Define Your Community
Communities can be geographic regions, municipalities, or neighborhoods; they can be groups of people who have certain characteristics in common; they can be large organizations like churches or companies. No matter the size, scope, or means of defining your community, it’s the first step to completing a CNA. It helps you narrow your focus and drive your data collection.
Bring People Together
The first word in this process is COMMUNITY – so you shouldn’t do a CNA alone! Reach out to other community organizations, put a team together, and complete interviews so you can make sure the voices of the community are included in the process and in the assessment itself.
Decide What You're Looking For
It’s easy to get overwhelmed by all the data that exists out there, and all the data that you could potentially collect. Set your parameters early – decide what you specifically want to look for. Just like defining your community, this will help you set parameters in order to be strategic about the data you collect.
Get the Facts
This is the step that most people think of when they think of a CNA – implementing methods to collect data… and there are so many methods to choose from! The bottom line is that we need to know the facts before we can determine what is going on in our community; we can’t work on assumptions alone. This toolbox is designed to help you learn more about how to collect those facts and what to do with them.
Share What You Found
You most likely found out some interesting things from your assessment – you shouldn’t keep that to yourself! Share the data and the results with other community organizations – hold forums, write a report, make presentations. You might be surprised how many people come to the table once they see the results of a CNA. That’s because we are all impacted by the issues in our community, and it takes all of us working together to address those issues.