The key concepts below define elements of community engagement to help ensure that your CHI efforts address the needs of the community.
An excellent way to gain insight into the needs and priorities of a community is to engage its members. This is particularly useful when trying to reach vulnerable/underserved populations. By drawing upon the inside knowledge of community members, you will better identify mutually beneficial opportunities for the greatest impact and enable greater acceptability with the community and thus, sustainability of your intervention(s).
Key Concepts
- Diverse community stakeholders are engaged as ongoing partners
- People who represent the broad interests of the communities served, particularly vulnerable/underserved populations, are involved in all stages of the CHI process
Tools for Getting Started
Tools are listed below in an order roughly aligned with the order of the key concept(s) they support above.
- Identifying and Analyzing Stakeholders and Their Interests
- Go to the Checklist and Main Section tabs for an overview of how to identify stakeholders and address stakeholder interests.
- Engaging Partners, Stakeholders, and Community Members
- Go to Tools to Assist You in Engaging Partners, Stakeholders, Community Members, and Media for a Circles of Involvement worksheet, customizable invitations, letters of commitment, presentation tools, talking points for Community Health Assessments (CHAs) and Community Health Improvement Processes (CHIPs), handouts to assist you in engaging partners, and other resources.
- A Practitioner's Guide to Advancing Health Equity—Meaningful Community Engagement for Health and Equity
- Go to pages 10–13 for a collection of health-equity considerations for policy, systems, and environmental strategies. Included are questions to consider and examples of how to integrate health equity into local practice.
Click here for additional tools related to the key concepts.
Relevant Excerpts from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Final Rule
The IRS Final Rule on Community Health Needs Assessments (CHNA) for Charitable Hospitals contains language related to select key concepts above. An excerpt of this language is provided below. To see the full regulation, click on the hyperlinked references below this paragraph.6
