What are the most important health needs of your community? Where would your efforts as public health professional be best utilized? There are several ways to answer this question. When determining the most important needs, you should consider multiple angles (e.g., perceived and actual needs) and different types of data sources (e.g., qualitative, quantitative, primary, and secondary). Some questions that should be considered when assessing your community’s needs are:
Perceived (qualitative data): What do the residents of the community think are the important issues?
Actual (quantitative data): What do the numbers and statistics show
Primary sources: What can you observe directly or collect data about by yourself?
Secondary sources: What can you look up in available resources?