Course Description


P8762   Chronic Disease and Community Health, 3 points

This is a 2-credit class and one in a series of four required courses for the MPH Health Promotion Track in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences. In particular, this course covers pre-requisite material for the 4-credit class on Advanced Intervention Design.
Many health programs fail because of inadequate understanding of the needs motivating the programs and the assets that can provide building blocks for the programs. This course introduces design of needs and assets assessment as the first step of sound health program design.
The course aims to provide conceptual background and prepare for practice of designing needs and assets assessments in public health. Readings on key concepts and steps in the needs and assets assessment process are combined with examples of actual assessments. Specific topics will include:
• Context of needs and assets assessment in public health
• Healthy People 2010 as a “meta needs assessment”
• Definitions of “need”
• Key steps and concepts for needs and assets assessment
• Literature reviews for existing evidence
• Needs Assessment as Step 1 of Intervention Mapping
• Capacity assessment, asset mapping and resource inventories
• Working with communities and stakeholders
• Collecting primary and secondary data
The class will offer an introduction to a selection of basic skills that are useful in the process of designing needs and assets assessments:
• Finding and organizing existing evidence through literature reviews and evidence tables
• Defining basic elements of needs assessment design -- purpose, target population, questions
• Identifying stakeholders and planning ways to engage them
• Choosing primary and secondary data sources
• Creating a logic model of risk
• Analyzing examples of needs and assets assessment
• Designing a poster to present a needs assessment plan
• Working as a team

Teams of students will be assigned topics they will work on together to complete group assignments. Within the broader group topic, each student will also develop an independent project that demonstrates competence in planning a needs and assets assessment and applies material covered in the coursed. Students will prepare poster presentations based on their individual projects.