Community members have invaluable insights about community health status, community health assets, service gaps, and opportunities for improvement. Community insight is especially important when community members are able to identify issues that are not adequately represented in available data. Community Health Solutions is highly experienced at mining community insights about opportunities and challenges for community health improvement. We call this portfolio of supports Community Insight Analysis.
Community Document Reviews
Community documents are an important but overlooked source of qualitative information on community health opportunities and challenges. Community Health Solutions is adept at identifying and reviewing community documents that shed light on important topics, such as extant community health needs assessments, public health reports, media reports, communications from local organizations, and various federal, state, and local policy documents. We are experienced at using formal methods of content analysis to identify key themes emerging from multiple documents.
Community Interviews
Interviews with community stakeholders can provide rich insight into community challenges and opportunities. Community Health Solutions has extensive training and experience in conducting structured interviews with individuals and groups. We have used this experience to conduct interviews with community professionals, community advocates, and in group settings with community members. We also provide strategic advice to help our clients determine which type of interview is best for a particular purpose. In this role we have helped our clients avoid common errors in misusing focus group interviews and other methods.
Community Surveys
Community surveys are vital resources for community health needs assessment and strategy development. Community Health Solutions has extensive training and experience in community survey design, execution, and analysis. We have used this capability to produce a variety of survey studies of community professionals, community advocates, and community members. We also apply specialized methodologies to mine existing surveys to develop local estimates of health risks related factors (examples include the CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey and the Youth Health Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey). By mining existing surveys in this fashion, we are able to explore the health status and experiences of local population in a highly efficient manner.
Community Insight Events
In many project situations there is a need for rapid development of community insight from a broad range of community stakeholders. Community Health Solutions created the concept of Community Insight Events as efficient way to generate qualitative insights from relatively large groups of community members. In a typical Community Insight Event we work with our client to design and facilitate one or a series of events at which multiple community members are invited to a two-to-four hour session at a local setting. Participants are engaged in a series of activities designed to inform them about the project and engage them in discussion about key topics. In many events we will also administer a survey to assure that every participant has a chance to fully voice their insights. These events typically produce rich insights on community health challenges and opportunities, plus a positive sense among participants that they have been engaged and heard as key stakeholders in the project.