Community Health Assessment Toolkit

Step 5: Prioritize Community Health Issues

Purpose

Hospitals and community stakeholders go through a process to distinguish the most pressing community health needs based on the data collected. The identified priority health needs will be addressed through the implementation strategies.

Key Components

Identify criteria for prioritization
Hospitals are at their discretion to develop prioritization criteria and processes. A set of criteria should be determined to guide the prioritization process. Typically, three to six priorities are selected, based on:

• Magnitude of the problem
• Severity of the problem
• Need among vulnerable populations
• Community’s capacity and willingness to act on the issue
• Ability to have a measurable impact on the issue
• Availability of hospital and community resources
• Existing interventions focused on the issue
• Whether the issue is a root cause of other problems
• Trending health concerns in the community

Additional prioritization criteria can include:

• The importance of each problem to community members
• Evidence that an intervention can change the problem
• Alignment with an organization’s existing priorities
• Hospital’s ability to contribute finances and resources to address the health concern
• Potential challenges or barriers to addressing the need
• The opportunity to intervene at the prevention level

Select community health priorities
Priorities can be selected as part of an established process informed by contributing partners, including community stakeholders, health departments, social service agencies, policy makers and hospital leadership. Action steps to be considered are:

• Select a prioritization committee – Members can be from hospitals, community stakeholder organizations and other organizations/institutions with specialized knowledge or constituents.
• Discuss the data – Present the qualitative and quantitative data to the prioritization committee. Make sure that the data are presented in a format that is accessible for the individuals on the committee. Foster an environment for open dialogue to discuss the identified health needs thoroughly.
• Review community assets – Reflect back on your asset map to identify what resources exist in your community to address the need. Take stock of what resources (staffing, in-kind, financial, etc.) in your hospital could potentially be leveraged to address that need.
• Select priorities – Decide which approach you want to use to determine priority needs.

• Build consensus around priority needs – If you select priorities that vary from community recommendations, justify the reasons for making those choices. Consider the consequences of not addressing an issue and how that can affect the community’s well-being in the future. In the case of overlapping health needs, consider consolidating into a single priority.
• Validate selected priorities – Conduct discussion groups with members of your hospital’s steering committee and community members for additional input. Make sure the selected priority needs align with hospital and community sentiment.
• Present priorities to senior leadership and the hospital’s board of trustees for approval – Align your hospital’s population health management strategy with the community health priorities.

Describe which needs were not prioritized
It may not be possible to address all community health needs at once. If there are significant needs that are not prioritized or will not be addressed, you should be able to describe what the needs are and why you have chosen not to address them.