Module 5: Conducting Community Service Assessments in Native Communities

TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE!

Please complete this short quiz before reviewing this module. By doing so, you will help us to evaluate how effectively we have presented the subject material, the average knowledge level of our participants, and any improvements that we should make. Thank you for your cooperation!

Take the Module 5 Pre-Test now!

Goal of Module 5:

To provide Community Services Assessment steps, tools, and resources for the development of an HIV/AIDS prevention intervention program.

This module contains the fundamentals for the systematic gathering of knowledge to better understand the needs and strengths in your community as they relate to HIV. The knowledge gathered will help to build a strengths-based and community-driven HIV prevention intervention program which responds to community needs. The model used is based on the Community Services Assessment (CSA). This module will take you through the steps of a CSA: needs assessment, resource inventory, and gap analysis.

Contents
Introduction to Conducting Community Service Assessments (CSA)

This module helps you create and conduct a CSA to aid in planning your HIV prevention intervention program.

It includes information on:

An HIV prevention program seeks to change the knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and/or behaviors (KABB) of individuals. It helps people to lower their risk of infection and to improve the overall health of their community. An effective program considers the context of people’s lives. To plan such a program, the first step is to identify social, economic, and cultural factors and to examine the impact of those factors on prevention strategies.

People who work in HIV prevention often know their communities well. They can identify risk behaviors and develop prevention programs to address them. However, many times information is not gathered in an ongoing, systematic manner that can provide a solid basis for HIV interventions. Module 5 introduces the concept of a Community Services Assessment (CSA), the process of collecting information and feedback to create a picture of what is going on in a community and then analyzing that information for gaps in services. CSA uses a systematic approach to create effective HIV prevention programs that directly respond to community needs, challenges, and strengths.

The 2003 CDC HIV Prevention Community Planning Guidance defines the needs assessment, resource inventory, and gap analysis as a “three-in-one component” of community planning known as the CSA. CSA includes a:

This module is a guide to plan and conduct a local CSA for HIV prevention. It begins with taking steps to define the general goals and scope of the community needs assessment: analyzing data, presenting results, and determining gaps. From the needs assessment we move to gathering the resource inventory, analyzing the needs and service gaps, and writing the final report of the results.

Our Town

In addition to processes, each step includes exercises and examples which apply the steps to real-life situations. At the end of the each module page click into the example CSA step and read along as we take you through our mock community, Our Town's development of a Community Services Assessment. Click on the following link to view Our Town: Mock Development of a Community Services Assessment in its entirety.