The key concepts below underscore the importance of addressing factors that impact health in order to focus CHI efforts and prioritize community health needs.
Your assessment of needs and resources will yield a wealth of information including opportunities to improve community health. The challenge will be how to prioritize those opportunities to maximize impact while making the best use of your resources. Remember to consider in advance how the availability of effective policies and programs will affect the prioritization of opportunities identified.
Key Concepts
- Processes and criteria that are open, transparent, and objective are used to set priorities
- Development of goals based on an analytic framework or logic model that conveys known or hypothesized causal pathways, upstream social and environmental determinants, and insights about what it takes to improve population health
Tools for Getting Started
Tools are listed below in an order roughly aligned with the order of the key concept(s) they support above.
- Guide to Prioritization Techniques
- This overview of widely used prioritization criteria and techniques includes guidance on which technique best fits your needs, step-by-step instructions for carrying out your effort(s), practical examples, and customizable templates.
- Developing a Framework or Model of Change
- Go to the Outline and Examples tabs for a step-by-step guide to developing a picture of the pathway from activities to intended outcomes, with additional related resources at each step. These sections also contain example frameworks and models for reference.
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.18
