Needs Assessment

My name is Susana Morales, and I am the Director of Community Health for the Texas Health Institute (THI).

Texas is often recognized as an increasingly diverse state. It is a place where legacy communities meet new communities, each bringing a different set of values, challenges, and opportunities for growth. The differences are vast, rich, and also contributors to different health outcomes. For these reasons, a place-based approach to community health needs assessments (CHNA) is a promising approach. A place-based approach amplifies and empowers communities, leverages community assets and resources, and engages with community members who bring lived-experience and native knowledge. This approach focuses on improving the health of a community and its community members by understanding health from their perspective and lived experiences.

We’re Jim Altschuld, Sonya Hung, and Yi-Fang Lee from The Ohio State University, Virginia Commonwealth University, and National Taiwan Normal University, respectively. We are sharing our observations from being involved in assessing needs for over 50 collective years in regard to conducting more meaningful Needs Assessments.

Hi! I’m Madhawa “Mads” Palihapitiya, an evaluator, researcher, and lecturer at UMass Boston and the Principal Investigator on an evaluation of a housing diversion mediation program aiming to increase housing stability in Massachusetts, which I’m discussing here.

Welcome to the Needs Assessment TIG’s week on AEA 365! I’m Lisle Hites, Chair of the Needs Assessment TIG and Professor of Community Medicine and Population Health at the University of Alabama. Enjoy this week’s blogs and we look forward to seeing you at the Needs Assessment TIG sessions at AEA 2023.

I’m Maurya West Meiers. I work at the World Bank Independent Evaluation Group as a Senior Evaluation Officer working on the Global Evaluation Initiative.  I’m also coauthor of A Guide to Assessing Needs: Essential Tools for Collecting Information, Making Decisions, and Achieving Development Results (free World Bank book). Last year I wrote an AEA365 post on decision-making resources for your needs …

Needs Assessment TIG Week: Benjamin Franklin’s Advice in Decision Making by Maurya West Meiers Read More »

Hello and Welcome to our TIG’s AEA365 sponsored week.  My name is Sue Hamann.  I have worked as an Evaluator for more than 40 years and am currently employed at the National Institutes of Health as a Health Scientist and Science Evaluation Officer.  My boss recently mentioned her interest in having a root cause analysis …

Needs Assessment TIG Week: Letting Your Needs Assessment Skills Shine by Sue Hamann Read More »

Hi, I am Hsin-Ling (Sonya) Hung, Director of Evaluation and Assessment at the Center on Health Disparities, Virginia Commonwealth University. I will briefly summarize key points of the needs assessment (NA) and asset/capacity building (A/CB) hybrid model. NA and A/CB are two different, oppositional schools of thought. In 2014 Altschuld and colleagues noted a new …

Needs Assessment TIG Week: The Needs Assessment and Asset/Capacity Building Hybrid Model by Hsin-Ling (Sonya) Hung Read More »

We’re Sonya Hung, Shea Wenzler, and Jim Altschuld from Virginia Commonwealth University and Ohio State. We’re sharing our experience on conducting online nominal group technique (NGT). The Setting We had a small project to do limited evaluation capacity building for faculty (mentors) and mentees in Underrepresented Minority (URM) Students’ training programs for a variety of …

Needs Assessment TIG Week: Trying the Nominal Group Technique (NGT) on the Web: Maybe Yes, Maybe No by Hsin-Ling (Sonya) Hung, Shea Wenzler, and James Altschuld Read More »

Hi! My name is Madhawa “Mads” Palihapitiya. I am an evaluator, researcher and teacher at UMass Boston. I am the Principal Investigator on a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) needs assessment and asset mapping project to help increase dispute resolution services to ethnically diverse, and often undocumented/unserved/marginalized populations in Massachusetts. Lesson Learned: Since DEI is …

Needs Assessment TIG Week: Assessing Access to Justice Needs and Assets through Community Mediation in Massachusetts from a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Lens by Madhawa “Mads” Palihapitiya Read More »