TITLE:
Assessing Community Health Needs in a Rural Area: Determining Best Practices to Meet New Affordable Care Act Requirements
AUTHORS:
Elizabeth Schafer, Rebecca Smullin Dawson
KEYWORDS:
Epidemiology, Community Health
JOURNAL NAME:
Health,
Vol.7 No.5,
May
13,
2015
ABSTRACT: We conducted a review of the peer-reviewed literature focused on conducting community health needs assessments and highlighted the necessary steps to conduct a community health needs assessment in a rural community. From the literature review, we identified three steps necessary— establishing partnerships, using a mixed methods approach, and disseminating results—to successfully conduct a needs assessment that fitted the definition of the Affordable Care Act. These three steps have been used as a guide for developing a protocol for conducting a community health needs assessment in Meadville, PA. We detail our preliminary project protocol here.