Community Health Assessment
According to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention): A community health assessment, also known as community health needs assessment, refers to a state, tribal, local, or territorial health assessment that identifies key health needs and issues through systematic, comprehensive data collection and analysis. A community health improvement plan is a long-term, systematic effort to address public health problems based on the results of community health assessment activities and the community health improvement process.
A community health assessment gives the Healthy Klamath Network comprehensive information about the community’s current health status, needs, and issues. In turn, this information can help with developing a community health improvement plan by justifying how and where resources should be allocated to best meet community needs.
In Klamath County, the Mobilizing for Action through Planning & Partnerships (MAPP) model is used to develop both documents. The first three elements of the MAPP model allow for the elements of the assessment to be gathered, before moving into the final three elements to create the improvement plan.
To date, the Klamath community has created four community health assessments, which can be found at the following links: