Community Health Needs Assessment Guide

Set Goals, Determine a Strategy, and Set Objectives

After determining which needs you will address, you’ll need to set goals, pick a strategy, and set objectives for each need.

It's important to review and address the range of social, economic and physical determinants as well as individual factors that impact each health outcome. You’ll also need to make sure your team has the right skills to implement the strategy and that the specific strategy contributes to your overall goal and objectives.

Click on an item below for details:

Step 1: Set Goals

A goal is a broad statement of a desired, long-term outcome. The goal drives all program activities.

To set goals, you’ll need to work with your partners to make sure everyone agrees upon intended results.

Example Goals:

• To reduce obesity in adults and children
• To improve the reproductive health of adolescents
• To reduce the death rate due to influenza and pneumonia

Step 2: Pick a Team for Each Strategy

When compiling a team for each strategy consider including the following people:

• Individuals within the hospital already working on this topic
• Individuals with knowledge and expertise in this topic
• Individual's ability to take on new projects/work
• Individual’s capacity to collaborate
• Health department leaders
• FQHC staff
• Non-Profit and Community Based Organization Leaders

Step 3: Research Strategy Options

Given your skills, experience and capacity, think about the type of approach that would be most effective at addressing the identified need (e.g screening, improving access, promoting awareness, advocating, providing policy support, etc.).

REVIEW BEST PRACTICES

Conduct a broad search for a particular area of need.
Begin by selecting only one topic area. If the search produces many results then start filtering your options by selecting specific rankings (evidence-based and effective practice), primary target area of interest, additional subtopic areas, and a geography that is similar to yours. Start broad and slowly narrow your search. You don’t want to miss valuable programs by creating too many filters.

Explore Promising Practices

Take advantage of a meta analysis that has already been conducted for you!
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Taskforce has conducted a systematic review of a wealth of community health improvement literature and has deemed certain programs/policies most effective. These programs are tagged with a "CDC" label in the Promising Practices database. To limit your results to these programs/policies check the "CDC Community Guide" and a topic area of your choice.

Browse CDC Community Guides

List feasible and appropriate programs for your circumstance. What are the themes? Are there similar components to evidence-based programs? Are there programs in your community that are already in place that can be enhanced to be evidence-based? Make notes about programs you’d like to research further and take advantage of the contact information available to you.

ASSESS CURRENT STRATEGIES

Your hospital and partners may already be implementing programs and activities that have the same goal and objectives. Talk to department leaders, executives (or executive team), and community benefit staff (or team) to compile a comprehensive list of what is already taking place.

Step 4: Choose Strategies

Create a list of the programs and activities that will best contribute to your goals, are realistic for you and your partners to implement, and closely align with your organization's strengths and resources.

Step 5: Set Objectives

Objectives are specific statements detailing the desired accomplishments of a program, and are used to inform the program’s short-term outcomes. Your program should include between 1-5 objectives that can be measured by you and your team, using data you collect through your program activities. Strive to write "SMART" (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-specific) objectives that specify who, what, when and by how much. Include action verbs such as establish, increase, reduce, and create.

Quick Tip for Hospitals: Use three-year time frames so that your objectives align with the IRS’s 3-year CHNA cycle.

Example Objectives:

• By end of FY 2022, Hospital A will increase the percentage of adults who participated in the nutrition education series and reported eating 5+ servings of fruits and vegetables per day by 15%.
• By end of FY 2022, Hospital A will increase the proportion of adolescents in participating schools using condoms by 30%.
• By end of FY 2022, Hospital A will increase the percentage of adults aged 65+ participating in Program A that receive a flu vaccine by 10%.

Learn More

Have Questions? Contact Us