Community assessment is a systematic process by which a community’s health status and related factors are examined; it is used to identify problems and assets in a community. Through community engagement, stakeholders work together to address health-related issues and promote well-being with the goal of improving health outcomes. These two processes work hand-in-hand to facilitate health improvements. COVID-19 has changed the assessment landscape in many ways–introducing new challenges for engagement, upending pre-pandemic implementation plans, and necessitating new and updated data to understand emerging health impacts and needs.

Themes

• Assessment under COVID-19: Understanding the primary, secondary, and ongoing impacts of COVID-19 in communities is important as we continue response and recovery work. Having timely, actionable data, equitably engaging communities despite challenges, and reimaging strategies for community health improvement is key.
• Equitable community engagement: Meaningfully engaging people in communities, particularly those with lived experience of inequities, is as important now as ever. Although COVID-19 has presented challenges for engagement, like social isolation, adaptive strategies that meet people where there are–physically and virtually–and center principles of equity in all settings–real and virtual–can help meet current needs.
• Catalysts for change: Community assessments–like Community Health Needs Assessments, Community Health Assessments, and Community Health Improvement Plans–should be catalysts for change, not just boxes to check. They are opportunities to bring community stakeholders together to ideate, collaborate and drive community change efforts forward.