Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) is the process of identifying and prioritizing community health needs. Conducting a CHNA involves the collection and analysis of community data, with input from community stakeholders as an essential component of this process. A completed CHNA report can inform strategies and plans for addressing the identified community health priorities. Ultimately, the goal of conducting a CHNA is to understand the health needs of a community in order to take appropriate actions to improve the community’s health.
This catalog provides a thorough list of the available tools and resources for conducting a CHNA, including a brief description, a link to the resource, a list of notable features, the target audience, examples of use, and the cost to access the resource. The first section lists the most comprehensive CHNA toolkits that are available, including step-by-step instructions and methods for data collection. The second section includes CHNA frameworks and guidelines that outline important concepts and elements of the CHNA process, but do not have instructions for going through the process. The third section contains data resources that communities can use to find different sets of data at the local level, but these resources lack instructions for fitting these data into a CHNA. The fourth section contains materials that were developed for specific states, some of which can be generalized to other states or communities and some of which cannot.
Catalog of Community Health Needs Assessment Tools and Resources
Questions? Contact us at trainings@nachc.org.
Important NACHC Library Content Note: This technical assistance resource was developed prior to the August 2017 release of the Health Center Compliance Manual by the Health Resources and Services Administration’s (HRSA) Bureau of Primary Health Care (BPHC). The BPHC Compliance Manual, issued August 2017, indicates where PINS, PALs and other program guidance are now superseded or subsumed by the BPHC Compliance Manual.
This project was supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
