What is a situational assessment?
Systematic process to gather analyze, synthesize and communicate data to inform planning decision about the goals, objectives, target audiences and activities of a health promotion program
-snapshot of the present
Why is it good to do a situational assessment?
A situational assessment is conducted early in the program planning process
-Good planning decisions draw upon good data
what should situational/need assessments have?
- Show the positive (strengths and assists as well as needs and deficits)
- Be the result of ongoing meaningful input from the intended audiences
- Look broadly and deeply at health issues
- Be complete, convincing, credible and compelling
- Look for socio-environmental determinants of health
Why do a situational assessment?
- To learn more about a population
- Anticipate trends and issues that may affect the implementation of sastrategy
- Identify community wants needs and assets
- Set priorities
- Inform pending decision regarding strategy
- Help write funding proposals
How do you identify trends in a community the fastest
By talking to the community vs waiting for the national survey to come out and analyze that
What are the 6 steps to conducting a situational assessment?
- Identify key questions to be answered
- Develop a data gathering plan
- Gather the data
- Organize, synthesize and summarize data
- Communicate the info
- Consider how to proceed with planning
In the first step of conducting a situational assessment what are the things that make up the situation?
- Look at the impact of the current situation (on health, outcomes, quality of life)
- Look at people at increased risk
- Settings (high risk or opportunities for intervention)
- Stakeholders perceptions, capacities, interests, mandates, current activities
- Needs and perceptions of key community members and community at large
In the 1st step of conduction a situational assessment, in what ways makes the situation better/worse?
- High risk/negative health behaviours
- Underlying causes/conditions (multiple levels)
- Protective factors
- Consider what may affect your course of action (SWOT)
In the 1st step of conducting a situational assessment what can we look at to see what’s being done/already has been done?
What other organizations have done
Policies, programs, environmental supports
Evaluation data available
What is the best available evidence to support various courses of action?
The kind that can support what you are going to do in the best way possible
Evidence that will be good and of use
In step one of conducting a situational assessment what are the 3 main things we need to ask ourselves?
- What is the situation
- What makes situation better/worse
- What are possible actions
IN step 2 of conducting a situational assessment what determines what needs to be done for a data gathering plan?
Questions developed in step 1 will determine data needed
Organize sources of data, tasks and persons responsible
For the data gathering plan what do you need?
Diverse types of data
Different types of methods of data collection
Varied sources of data
What are the different types of data that we can have?
Qualitative and quantitative
- community health status indicators
- Polling/survey
- Community stories/testimonials
- evaluation findings
- Research findings
- Cost/benefit data
- Syntheses and guidelines
- Best/recommended practices
- stakeholder mandates agendas and policies
When gathering data under population, what things can you evaluate for?
Demographics
Socio-economic status
Living and working conditions
Geography
When gathering data under health status, what things can you evaluate for?
Mortality
Morbidity
Health and wellness
When gathering data under behavioural factors, what things can you evaluate for?
Health services Seeking behaviours
Health Behaviours
Elements of behaviour change
When gathering data under environmental factors, what things can you evaluate for?
Social environment
Natural and Built environment
Socio-Political Aspects of environmental change
What are the different methods of data collection?
- Consulting with stakeholders (interviews, focus groups)
- Engage in direct observation
- Conduct environmental scans
- Conduct surveys
- Search literature
- Examine existing large data sets
What are some varied sources of data?
- Community service organizations
- Polling companies
- Community members/spokespersons
- Public Libraries
- COnsultants
- Websites
- Resource Centres
- Researchers
- Government departments
- Private sector
Why are communist health status reports good?
They are a good place to start before going to the literature -have info on everything from: demographics injuries deaths lifestyle behaviours hospitalizations etc
Why is the city of London a good resource?
Several up to date resources about London:
- population characteristics
- social issues
- neighbourhood profiles
- community snapshots
What is a rapid risk factor surveillance system?
Phone survey of 100 randomly selected ontaito adults, conducted months by researchers at YorkU
- 15 min survey
- 75 questions
- costs 50,000
Why and who uses rapid risk factor surveillance systems?
Participating health units have to pay a fee and they decide what questions they want to ask in a given survey
- Info used by health units to plan programs
- provides more community specific data than larger surveys
