Assessment and Planning Action Team
Purpose
Improving organizations’ processes for identifying and addressing community strengths and needs.
About the Strategy Area
Assessment is the systematic review of indicators within a given population to identify key assets and problems. Planning is an effort to leverage community assets to address problems. Organizations are often required to conduct assessment and planning efforts. They use plans to set priorities and coordinate and target resources.
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Since 2021, the Assessment and Planning Action Team has been focused on evolving assessment and planning practices to increase community leadership and organizational responsiveness. To learn more about how the team works together, please visit our Action Team page.
Our Journey
Towards Evolving Assessment and Planning Processes
What We're Learning
Community and organizational leaders must work together to find the story behind community data and provide context surrounding community health. The following are conditions we are finding necessary to support the evolution of assessment and planning processes.
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Centering community means responding to community. Who knows a community's strengths and concerns better than the members of that community? No one! The people living, working and playing in a community are the experts. Organizations have an opportunity to learn from these experts and design action plans based on this input.
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Relationships matter. Building trusting relationships between organizational staff and community leaders in planning and assessment processes helps create sustainable partnerships in building healthy communities.
Assessment and Planning in Action
2023 Jefferson County Public Health Community Health Assessment
A community health assessment aims to assess and monitor the factors that influence the health of the people in a community. For the 2023 Jefferson County Community Health Assessment, Jefferson County Public Health contracted with a wide range of organizations including Archway Communities, Bondadosa, Jefferson Center, Kaizen Food Rescue and Latinas Community Connections Services to reach community members for their input in order to create a shared understanding of the status of many health topics in Jefferson County.
Tools and Resources for Assessment and Planning
Many resources exist to inform and support assessment and planning efforts in our communities. Resources referred to in this action team are listed below.