Illinois Public Health Department
Suppose your first job is an intern on the staff of the DeKalb County, Illinois Public Health Department. You have been assigned to do a Needs Assessment with regard to a proposed flu vaccine initiative in this community targeted on a new strain of flu which is likely to hit the County very hard in the coming calendar year. Your boss has told you that she expects you to come up with strong data which would support this Health Department’s priority. You have 8 months to complete the task. You are doing this yourself, with no assistance.Answer the following questions regarding the Needs Assessment you have been assigned to complete.
- What methodologies would you use, and what steps would you take to accomplish your goal?
- What kinds of data would you collect, and where would you go to find it?
- Who would your likely demographic target populations be, and why?
2.PHHE 467 has emphasized the need to use evaluation techniques which yield valid andreliable data.If you were conducting a survey of DeKalb County, what kinds of issues wouldyou have to consider in the process of survey selection, creating a survey, survey data collection, types of surveys, and cultural and diversity influences?How would each of these issues relate to reliability and validity concerns?
3.Joel Cowen’s classic Mental Health Needs Assessment (2009) features four types of needs assessment tools. Briefly describe each kind of assessment and explain why each type of assessment is useful in determining the unmet needs of a community. (Hint: Each of the four assessment tools (techniques) samples a different perspective [examples: field professionals, health services providers, prospective services clientele]). What perspective does each assessment tool reflect? Why is it important to use multiple kinds of needs assessment tools in gauging the needs of a population?What is meant by the phrase “Weight of the evidence”?How is this concept important to the art of crafting a valid and reliable needs assessment?
4. Define and explore the positives and negatives of the four kinds of cost analysis (cost benefit, cost effectiveness, cost utility and cost feasibility). How is each kind of cost analysis generally used in local program planning? How is each one particularly useful?How is each one limited in what it does for us as project evaluators and planners?