Topic 5 - Health Needs Assessment
by Sulaiman Yousuf
1. Purpose: to gather the information required to bring about change beneficial to the health of the population. Limited resources, need to be targeted for best use to maximise health gain.
1.1. Stevens (1998) proposes that there are four ways in which reallocating resources can bring about health gain
2. Patient Level
3. Population Level
3.1. Health needs assessment is a systematic approach to identifying and prioritising the health and healthcare needs of a population in order to inform service delivery.
4. Definitions of Need
5. Aspects of need
6. Why undertake health needs assessment?
6.1. 1. HNA is a recommended public health tool to provide evidence about a population on which to plan services and address health inequalities
6.2. 2. HNA provides an opportunity to engage with specific populations and enable them to contribute to targeted service planning and resource allocation.
6.3. 3. HNA provides an opportunity for cross-sectoral partnership working and developing creative and effective interventions.
7. Approaches to Health Needs Assessment
7.1. A Global Information Based Needs Assessment
7.2. A Guidelines Based Needs Assessment
7.3. A Community Development Approach
7.4. An Advocacy Approach
7.5. A ‘Health Alliances’ Approach
7.6. An Economics Approach
8. Views of health
8.1. 1. Biomedical Model of Health
8.2. 2. Social Model of Health
8.3. 3. Lay Perceptions of Health
8.4. 4. A Humanist View of Health
9. Approaches to Assessing Health Needs
9.1. Corporate -
9.1.1. Systematic collection of knowledge and views regarding healthcare services and needs.
9.2. Comparative approaches-
9.2.1. Comparison of services in your area against those in another
9.3. Epidemiological and cost effectiveness approaches -
9.3.1. Description of the burden of disease e.g. incidence and prevalence and how effective is the treatment i.e. benefit versus cost