For Part I of the Final Project, read this week’s resources. Then, determine the community you would like to focus on for your community health needs assessment project. This can be the community you reside in or a community with which you are familiar. Select a population (e.g., elderly people, teenage mothers) that you want to focus on within the community.

The Assignment (3–4 pages excluding APA citations)

Address the following three areas this week for Part 1 of the Final Project:

1. Present the purpose of a community health needs assessment:

   For this section, clearly articulate your understanding of what a community health needs assessment is and why someone would conduct one. Explain your understanding based on the resources, and apply this information to your chosen community.

2. Describe your community and a population within the community:
   • Using the Understanding and Describing the Community resource from Week 2 for guidance, provide a description of the community you selected.
   • Describe the specific population (e.g., the elderly, African-American adolescents) within the community that you will use to conduct the community health needs assessment. Some topics you may wish to discuss include:
     • The background and history of the chosen population
     • The rationale behind choosing this particular population
     • A description of the population’s socioeconomic factors
3. Explain the community health needs assessment’s goals:

   Explain three to four overarching goals for your community health needs assessment.

Resources

Gilmore, G. D. (2012).
Needs and capacity assessment strategies for health education and promotion (4th ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.

• Chapter 2, “Needs and Capacity Assessment Within the Bigger Picture” (pp. 45–46)
• Chapter 3, “Single-Step Surveys” (pp. 60–81)
• Appendix B, “Health Risk Appraisals” (pp. 304–308)

Braunstein, S., & Lavizzo-Mourey, R. (2011). How the health and community development sectors are combining forces to improve health and well-being.
Health Affairs,30(11), 2042–2051.

Note: Retrieved from the Walden Library databases.