Title: CDC's Assessment Initiative - Building Capacity for Community Health
Author:
Section/SPIG: Community Health Planning and Policy Development
Issue Date:
By Alex Charleston, Project Manager, Assessment Initiative, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Epidemiology Program Office, Division of Public Health Surveillance and Informatics, Applied Sciences Branch
In northeast Missouri, an adolescent task force was created as a result of a seven-county regional assessment. This task force was awarded funding through the Missouri Hospital Community Interventions Initiative partnership to reduce the high rate of adolescent pregnancy in their region. As a result, this region is witnessing a decline in first and repeat adolescent pregnancies, as well as a decrease in the rates of sexually transmitted diseases among the adolescent population. By performing an assessment, the task force was able to justify funding for a regional health problem.
The ability of the public health system to ensure the health of the U.S. residents depends upon its capacity to accomplish three core functions: assessment, policy development, and assurance. Assessment, by nature of its definition, involves identifying factors that threaten the health of a population and determining whether sufficient resources are available to effectively deal with those threats. Thus, assessment is the foundation of public health practice at the local level and part of a cycle of activities designed to fulfill society's interest in ensuring conditions in which populations can be healthy.
CDC's Assessment Initiative is a cooperative agreement between CDC and state health departments designed to develop and strengthen community health assessment capacity. Funded states work together with local health jurisdictions and communities, developing innovative systems and methods to improve
o access to data
o skills to accurately interpret and understand the data, and
o effective use of data so that assessment findings ultimately drive public health program and policy decisions.
Since its inception in 1992, a total of fifteen states have received support through the Assessment Initiative. Currently funded states (Florida, Missouri, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, Utah, and Washington) are working in two primary focus areas, as follows:
1. Community Health Assessment Practice: Developing, implementing, and evaluating tools and methods to improve the capability of local public health agencies and communities to conduct effective community health assessments and use the resulting information to affect public health programs and policies.
2. Data Dissemination Systems: Implementing electronic systems for user-friendly analysis and dissemination of public health data and evaluating of the effect of these systems on primary users.
Although multiple tools and approaches exist to assist state/local health departments in assessing health needs and developing plans to address them, CDC recognizes that each state is unique with regard to organizational structure, legislative requirements, degree of local health department autonomy, and other factors that affect the way in which assessment can be effectively implemented. Instead of focusing on the specific tool that is used, the Assessment Initiative centers on building the capacity and infrastructure necessary to do assessment, taking into consideration each state's individual strengths and limitations and relying on the state Assessment Initiative team to develop and evaluate an assessment process that works effectively in their organizational environment. In this way, grantees are encouraged to work across departmental and programmatic lines, to produce or adapt systems, methods, and tools that best meet identified needs.
For CDC, the Assessment Initiative serves as a test bed for development of these innovative tools and promising practices, which can then be shared more broadly with the larger public health community. Interested CHPPD members are invited to attend the annual CDC Assessment Initiative Conference to be held this September in Atlanta, Georgia, and to join us at the “Developing Unique Community-Based Infrastructure for Assessment” concurrent session at APHA's annual meeting this fall.
More information on these and other events can be accessed at the Assessment Initiatives Web site (http://www.cdc.gov/epo/dphsi/assessment.htm).