What is

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What is Health Needs Assessment? Session 3
Helen Monks Health Development Manager Public
Health Wakefield District PCT
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Aim
To help participants understand the importance
and benefits of assessing needs prior to planning
and delivering services and have skills and
ability to carry out a health needs assessment.
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Learning Outcomes

• Participants will have an understanding of how to
  carry out a Health Needs Assessment.
• Participants will have a better understanding of
  the concept of need and how it is defined.
• Participants will have a better understanding of
  how to strengthen involvement in community health
  needs assessments.
• Will know who to approach in their area for
  advice and support on this topic.

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Outline of the Workshop

• What is need?
• What is inequality?
• The purpose of health needs assessment
• The process of health needs assessment
• Empowering, engaging and involving communities in
  Health Needs Assessment

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What is need?

• The potential to benefit from health care
• Evidence based health care informs need
• Patients views must also feed determination of
  need

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Is demand the same as need?

• NO
• Demand is an expressed request for health
  services
• Ensure you are collecting data about need and not
  just acting upon demand

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The Social Model of Health

• recognises that health is an outcome of all the
  factors affecting an individual, a family or a
  community from a wide variety of sources

Exercise What health means to me
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What affects my Health?
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Dahlgren and WhiteheadRainbow Model
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What is inequality?
Exercise Car park exercise
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Communities and Health

• Poverty
• Unemployment
• Isolation
• Pollution
• Low self esteem
• Lack of Social support
• High self-blame
• Loss of purpose

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Communities and Health

• Low perception of power
• Low income
• Poor housing
• Low levels of literacy
• Limited access to resources
• Stress
• Oppression
• Culture

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The purpose of health needs assessment
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Community Health Needs Assessment
Health Needs Assessment is a systematic method
of reviewing health issues facing a population in
order to agree priorities to make changes to
plans, interventions and resource allocation to
improve health and reduce inequalities.
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What is Health Needs Assessment?
the systematic use of information and health
intelligence applied to a defined population to
assist in the formulation of health policy in
regard to preventative services, health
promotion, treatment options and other coming
regimes of proven worth.
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Health Needs Assessment is

• Systematic
• Population based
• About finding out about health issues
• About using the results to improve patient care

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Why do HNA?

• To understand the health needs of your practice
  population

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You can use this information to

• Develop health strategy that is responsive to
  patients needs
• Make decisions about priorities and targeting
• Address health inequalities
• Inform practice and team development
• Promote evidence based practice

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The cart or the horse?

• The planning and commissioning of services should
  be from a needs led approach (What service does
  our population need)
• Rather than
• A service lead approach (how can our population
  use the services we have)

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The process of health needs assessment
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(No Transcript)
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Taking Action on Community Health Needs
Getting Started 1. What population? What
are you trying to achieve? Who needs to be
involved? What resources are required? What are
the risks?
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Taking Action on Community Health Needs
Identifying health priorities 2. Populatio
n profiling Gathering data Perceptions of
needs Identifying and assessing health
conditions and determinant factors What sources
of data are available for you?
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Community Assessment and its Data Sources
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Taking Action on Community Health Needs

• Assessing a health priority for action
• Choosing health conditions and determinant
  factors with the most significant size and
  severity impact
• Determining effective and acceptable
  interventions and actions

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Taking Action on Community Health Needs
Planning for change
4. Clarifying aims of intervention Action
planning Monitoring and evaluation
strategy Risk management strategy
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Taking Action on Community Health Needs
Moving on / review

• Learning from the project
• Measuring impact
• Choosing the next priority

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Taking Action on Community Health Needs

• Analyse Data
• What does it mean?
• Assess needs (consider possible solutions)
• What is within my remit?
• Are funds required?
• What is within someone elses remit?
• Are there any quick wins?

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Providing a better Service depends on good needs
identification

• This depends on knowing the health problems in
  the locality
• This depends on the resources available within
  the community
• This depends on mobilising the resources in the
  community

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Empowering, engaging and involving communities
in Health Needs Assessment
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Ladder of participation
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The Activities of Community Development

• Profiling and analysis, with the community,
  sharing the development of a profile of the
  communities needs and resources
• Capacity building using participative techniques
  and training to
• draw out the skill of the
• community members

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But whats wrong with what we do now?

• Our current practice could be
• what weve always done
• based on old evidence
• demand not need driven
• individually lead

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Activity Engaging with the public
Good points about your process Bad
points Share with the group
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Community Involvement
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Taking Action on Community Health Needs

• Needs assessment methods may be
• Democratic methods
• Meeting people in their own groups
• Stakeholder conferences
• Consultation workshops
• Public meetings
• Market research
• Quantitative surveys
• Focus groups
• Interviews with users and others

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Taking Action on Community Health Needs

• Needs assessment methods may be
• Rapid Appraisal
• Written records
• Interviews from a range of informants
• Observations made in neighbourhoods or interviews
  in homes

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Rapid Appraisal

• A participatory research method
• Provides qualitative data
• Uses key informants from area
• Problems are identified
• Solutions are discussed
• An action plan is produced based upon community
  views and service providers

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Taking Action on Community Health Needs

• Needs assessment methods may be
• Participative community research
• Consultation
• Service users
• Carers
• Representatives

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Taking Action on Community Health Needs
Notice the choice of methods may be qualitative
or quantitative
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Taking Action on Community Health Needs

• Reality check
• Is this what people REALLY mean?
• Take action
• Monitor
• Evaluate with the people involved

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Who are you going to call?
Look at your in house data / records Link
with partners who have data Local Authority,
Police, Fire Service, Schools, etc National
Statistics Website http//www.statistics.gov.uk
/ Yorkshire and Humber Public Health
Observatory http//www.yhpho.org.uk/ Find out
who works in the community with the community
e.g. community development workers
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Thanks
Helen Monks - helen.monks_at_wdpct.nhs.uk (HM)
07974 701905 Public Health Wakefield District
Primary Care Trust Castleford and Normanton
District Hospital Lumley Street,
Hightown Castleford WF10 5LT 01977 665870