A Community Services Assessment (CSA) can help determine the appropriate HIV prevention intervention necessary to target the knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors (KABB) of your community. The information gathered can identify how common a problem is and/or why it occurs. For example, one might find that a large number of Native youth participate in binge drinking because there are no youth activities available to them on weekends.
A CSA also identifies specific communities or groups of people that are in need of particular prevention programs. Demographic information—such as tribal affiliation, gender, age, and geographic location—can narrow the scope of programs to maximize resources (and outcomes) and focus on those most in need.
Community healthcare staff may know of certain behavioral patterns that put local Native people at risk for HIV; a CSA can confirm or clarify such knowledge with documented evidence. A CSA can also separate information on a subsection of the community from information that applies to the whole community. Documentation is always important when discussing time and resource allocation with fund-makers and program management.
Additionally, a CSA can provide information about the focus community’s assets (strengths and resources). Assessing your community’s strengths and challenges can give you a balanced view of the environment in which your prevention program exists. You can draw upon these community assets to improve your program’s effectiveness.
COMPONENTS OF A COMMUNITY SERVICES ASSESSMENT (CSA):
The needs assessment reports on the results of your findings—information about the population of interest, such as Native out-of-school youth, or Native drug-injecting women.
The resource inventory is a compilation of available, accessible, and culturally appropriate resources and services (and their funding sources) used by the focus population in your area.
The gap analysis identifies where there are gaps (unmet needs/underused services/overused services) between the needs assessment report and resource inventory.
The first step to begin a CSA is to create an epidemiological (epi) profile.
Note on Evaluation of the CSA Process: It is important to ensure that evaluation is built into the CSA process. One way to do this is to ask process questions at the end of each CSA step. These self-reflecting questions can be used to identify the parts of the process which are going well and those that could be improved. Additionally, it gives you the opportunity to learn from your mistakes and successes as you go along. Examples of questions you can ask yourself and other partners involved in the CSA are:
- Did you get the information that you wanted to get?
- Was the information gathered useful?
- Do you need to gather other types of information?
- What went well during this step?
- What do we need to do differently in this step?
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