5 Ways Health Departments Can Help Ensure Healthy Voting: 2020
This resource emphasizes the role of health departments in promoting healthy voting practices, particularly during the 2020 election and amid challenges like...
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.
Equity & Systems
Meaningful community engagement is essential to harvest the wisdom and expertise that lies in communities. People with lived experience of inequities are closest to the problems that need solving, and have awareness of what works, what doesn’t, and what resources are available in a community. Centering those who are most impacted–and often least invited–in all phases of community assessment and implementation helps to ensure an equitable approach that can transform systems.
Featured Resources
This article examines vaccine hesitancy, with a focus on COVID-19 vaccines. It discusses concerns and conspiracy theories driving COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy, the need for compassion in vaccine education, levels of trust in individuals and institutions that discover, develop, and deliver vaccines, and more.
This webinar features a panel of public health leaders who address how to build confidence and trust in COVID-19 vaccines and discuss effective communication strategies, including language that works to improve vaccine acceptance.
This policy brief focuses on how historic maltreatment of communities of color and tribal nations, along with current day structural racism, have created distrust of government and healthcare in many communities of color and tribal communities. It provides six key recommendations on policy actions to help build trust in and access to COVID-19 vaccines.
This report provides tools and information on community engagement in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic. It defines community engagement, provides a blueprint for community assessment, guides through potential implementation strategies, and offers additional resources.
This article covers a tool created to help leaders begin or refine the process of reordering community priorities and reshaping the work of community institutions and initiatives in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This webpage links to a tool for community needs assessment, provided by Community Action Partnership. Two versions of the tool are available, a comprehensive guide and an EZ guide, in two formats, word and PDF.
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Public Health Forward: Implementation Guidance From State and Local Health Departments
Project REFOCUS
Supporting Community-Based Organizations To Reignite a Culture of Immunization
Building an Ecosystem of Community-Led Public Health
Summit 4 Accelerating Action Report: Catalyzing Cross-Sectoral Partnerships and Community Engagement
Urban Health Agenda
Raising the Bar
Trusted Voices for COVID-19: Engaging Community Leaders To Overcome Vaccine Hesitancy
Lessons from COVID-19 on Executing Communications and Engagement at the Community Level During a Health Crisis Perspectives
Collaborating for Vaccinations in Latinx Communities
6 Ways to Educate Rural Communities About the COVID-19 Vaccines
Slowing the Spread of COVID-19 Will Protect Communities
Emerging Leaders in Public Health Respond to COVID-19 in Local Communities
Resilient American Communities Methods
Vaccinating Black Californians Through Faith Communities
COVID-19 GIS Hub
Rural and Conservative Engagement Effort
Building Vaccine Confidence Through Community Engagement
U.S. COVID Risk and Vaccine Tracker
Promoting a Community Engagement and Community Mitigation Approach to Early Action and Prevention of COVID-19
Correctional and Detention Facilities
Community Needs Assessment COVID-19 Update Template
Reimagining Strategy in the Context of the COVID-19 Crisis: A Triage Tool
Social Listening And Monitoring Tools
Equitable Community Engagement During A Global Pandemic And Beyond
Pivoting Community Engagement During COVID-19
How To Perform A Needs Assessment For Your Community During COVID-19
Community Health Assessment During COVID-19
3 Tips for Conducting a Community Needs Assessment Amid COVID-19
Community Needs, Perceptions And Demand: Community Assessment Tool
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Vaccine Community Assessment: A Tool To Understanding Your Communities COVID-19 Vaccination Decisions And Needs
COVID-19: How To Include Marginalized And Vulnerable People In Risk Communication And Community Engagement
Engaging Communities As Experts Throughout The Assessment Process
Addressing Community Needs And Preparing For The Secondary Impacts Of COVID-19
Community Benefit – Community Health Needs Assessments During COVID Not Mission Impossible
Preparing A Community Needs Assessment During The COVID-19 Pandemic
Creating The Next Community Health Needs Assessments In The Aftermath Of Covid
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Community Health Assessment And Improvement Planning
Community Health Needs Assessment For Charitable Hospital Organizations – Section 501(R)(3)
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Assessing And Addressing Community Health Needs
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Social Media And Research Toolkit
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Disease Tracking and Surveillance
Disease surveillance helps us detect disease cases, understand burden of disease and risk factors, provide the basis for timely and informed decision-making, guide control measures, and monitor impacts. Since the onset of COVID-19, surveillance efforts have worked to provide real-time tracking and forecast data, despite challenges with diagnostic capacity, case reporting, insufficient contact tracing, and fragmented data systems. COVID-19 has highlighted the need to invest in modern data systems, expand and skill up the workforce, and ensure data reporting and interpretation retain high ethical and epidemiological standards.