What’s Up with All This Community Assessment?

I love my job and I learn from it everyday.  It is the beauty of talking to community coalitions across this great nation who experience things in different contexts that tend to originate from many of the same problems and issues. 

When a coalition calls and asks for help on Strategic Planning—which is pretty common—I always ask for a copy of their Logic Model. Once I take a look, I quickly begin to ask about data collection and what processes they used to gather information to inform the coalition and the community about their problems. The conversation quickly turns to, “May I see your Community Assessment?”

What I often get are the five or so paragraphs that the coalition used to get a grant, or a compilation of student survey data into some charts and possible a graph or two. First, that is NOT a Community Assessment. And as our famous trainer Paul Evensen says—and I paraphrase—YOU CAN’T CONDUCT A COMMUNITY ASSESSMENT FROM THE CONFINES OF THE FOUR WALLS OF YOUR OFFICE!

I don’t mean to yell, but a Community Assessment is the foundation for the rest of your coalition’s planning and implementation and it becomes what your coalition will evaluation and eventually, sustain. It provides the process for informing the coalition and community, which is how a coalition also shapes their membership recruitment, diversity issues—basically, EVERYTHING from that point forward. Its importance cannot—and should not—be ignored.

At the Institute, we strongly suggest that you update your Community Assessment on a regular basis (like, every 12 months) and that your coalition engage in data collection continuously.  Why? Well, you need to consistently progress toward outcomes. But how do you know you are getting there if you are not collecting data? Student surveys are a great place to start, but they are not the only place to go! Take a look at page 18 of the Institute’s Assessment Primer for a list (and certainly not an exhaustive one) of data indicators that you can collect to help illustrate the issues your community is facing as a result of substance abuse. 

The Institute also teaches the five elements to Community Assessment. Call the Institute's Training and Technical Assistance Department, at 800-542-2322, ext. 240, for help getting through those elements or with your next Community Assessment update.

We would love to hear about what your coalition is doing—add a comment to this blog post and tell us how your community conducted its initial assessment and what it does to keep its assessment up to date. What issues has your community faced in data collection for the purposes of Community Assessment?  How does your coalition use the Community Assessment today, now, in this moment, to make decisions and prioritize action?

For more information on Community Assessment, contact the CADCA National Coalition Institute's Training and Technical Assistance Department at training@cadca.org, and phone number is 800-542-2322, ext. 240.