Lac Courte Oreilles Community Health Center

A community health needs assessment (also called a CHNA), refers to a state, tribal, local, or territorial health assessment that identifies key health needs and issues through systematic, comprehensive data collection and analysis. Community health assessments use such principles as:

• Multi-sector collaborations that support shared ownership of all phases of community health improvement, including assessment, planning, investment, implementation, and evaluation

• Proactive, broad, and diverse community engagement to improve results

• A definition of community that encompasses both a significant enough area to allow for population-wide interventions and measurable results, and includes a targeted focus to address disparities among sub-populations

• Maximum transparency to improve community engagement and accountability

• Use of evidence-based interventions and encouragement of innovative practices with thorough evaluation

• Evaluation to inform a continuous improvement process

• Use of the highest quality data pooled from, and shared among, diverse public and private source