A Community Action Guide to Comprehensive Community Needs Assessment

Are you driven to mobilize your community to tackle a pressing issue, but unsure where to start? Do you find yourself pondering questions like, “How do I effectively investigate the problem?”, “Who should be involved in developing solutions?”, and “How can I guide a diverse group of community representatives to reach a consensus on a shared vision and actionable steps?”

This guide provides the answers you need to lead your community in action planning, focusing on a community action guide to comprehensive community needs assessment.

What is Action Planning?

Action planning is about empowering your community to collaboratively address issues and improve outcomes for its residents, sustainably and across various areas of concern.

When a community unites to pursue better health for all, creating an enabling environment demands collaborative efforts from diverse sectors. This includes healthcare organizations, religious institutions, schools, and local businesses. Representatives from these sectors form a community coalition, which can then work to influence systems changes – programs, policies, and practices that enhance the community’s capacity to be a healthy environment.

A community coalition typically starts its work by creating an action plan.

An action plan is a detailed roadmap outlining the steps needed to achieve a vision for a healthy community. It includes desired changes, proposed activities (action steps), timelines, and assigned responsibilities, providing a clear path for collaborators to follow.

How Does Action Planning Help a Community?

Regardless of the complexity of the challenges your community faces, action planning helps you:

• Understand the community’s perspective on the issue and potential solutions.
• Ensure inclusive and integrated participation across community sectors in the planning process.
• Build consensus on achievable actions based on the community’s unique assets and needs.
• Define concrete actions for members of the community coalition.

This tool will guide you through each of these steps, providing the necessary guidance for successful action planning.

Why is Action Planning Important?

Proper planning is crucial for maximizing the impact of any initiative. An action plan, though requiring a significant investment of time and energy, serves as a valuable tool that aligns all collaborators with a common goal, ensuring project success.

An action plan ensures that:

• No detail is overlooked.
• Proposed action steps are feasible and realistic.
• Collaborators follow through with their commitments.
• Measurable activities are documented and evaluated.

Action planning provides a central reference point with a detailed timeline and assigned accountability for achieving tasks, ultimately leading to positive change.

Research from the Center for Community Health and Development indicates that several factors positively influence rates of community and system change, including action planning:

• Analyzing Information About the Problem, Goals, and Factors Affecting Them
• Establishing Your Group’s Vision and Mission
• Defining Organizational Structure and Operating Mechanisms
• Developing a Framework or Model of Change
• Developing and Using Strategic and Action Plans
• Arranging for Community Mobilizers
• Developing Leadership
• Implementing Effective Interventions
• Assuring Technical Assistance
• Documenting Progress and Using Feedback
• Making Outcomes Matter
• Sustaining the Work

When Should You Create an Action Plan?

Ideally, an action plan should be developed within the first six to twelve months of starting an initiative or organization. Once created, it should be reviewed regularly (monthly or at least annually) and adapted to meet the evolving needs of the community.

What are the Components of an Action Plan Framework?

While some issues are universal, each community has unique assets and barriers to improving conditions for its residents. Therefore, each community’s intervention strategy for influencing programs, policies, and practices will be unique. A step-by-step framework guides community action and change within the context of those unique needs.

By approaching the action planning process as a series of manageable steps, you can lead your community coalition with confidence.

Determine What People and Sectors of the Community to Involve

As you begin your action planning process, you need to:

• Document the problem or issue with data and statistics.
• Learn more about your community.
• Involve community members.

How do you accomplish these steps?

Listen to the community about issues and options. Conduct focus groups and public forums to gather information about perceived issues and solutions.

Key information to gather includes:

• The perceived problem or issue.
• Perceived barriers or resistance to addressing the issue.
• Resources for change.
• Recommended solutions and alternatives.
• Current and past initiatives to address the problem or issue.

Gather data to document the problem. In addition to community perspectives, document the issue using existing information sources. Ask:

• “What are the issues related to the problem/topic in your community?”
• “What are the consequences of these issues?”
• “Who is affected?”
• “How are they affected?”
• “Are these issues of widespread concern?”

This data is crucial for evaluating the effectiveness of your efforts. Use it as baseline data to compare against post-implementation data.

Helpful data sources include:

• State or county health department data
• State social services department data
• Hospital admissions and exit records
• Police records
• Chamber of commerce data
• Nonprofit service agency data
• School district data
• Information from your local reference librarian
• Data from specialized local, statewide, or national organizations

Also see federal websites such as:

• Become aware of local resources and past and current efforts*. If current efforts exist, consider how they can be supported and enhanced.

  • Do current efforts have a parallel vision?
  • How many people are they serving?
  • Do the services and programs meet local needs?

Learn from past failures by understanding why similar initiatives failed and applying those lessons.

Involve key officials and grassroots leaders in a planning group: Extend your planning coalition to be as inclusive as possible, reflecting the diversity of the community.

Use interviews to answer these questions:

• Who can make things happen on this issue?
• What individuals are in a position to create (or block!) change?
• What contact people within the initiative would be most successful in getting those key officials to become involved?
• What neighborhoods and ethnic and cultural communities are particularly affected by this issue?
• What individuals and groups make things happen in these neighborhoods?
• What contact people within the initiative would be most successful in involving members of these neighborhoods?

Convene a Planning Group

Publicize planning sessions to ensure they are open to all group members. As facilitator, start and end meetings on time, use an agenda, and cover items efficiently. Other responsibilities include:

Managing conflict. Diverse views may lead to conflict. Leaders should elevate discussions to find common ground and remind members of the shared vision.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Planned Approach to Community Health (PATCH) suggests these techniques for reaching consensus:

• Avoid the “one best way” attitude; seek the best collective judgment.
• Avoid “either/or” thinking; combine approaches.
• Majority vote may not always be best; encourage give-and-take.
• Healthy conflict can help reach consensus; don’t end conflict prematurely.
• Problems are best solved when everyone communicates and listens.

Conflict resolution involves settling disagreements. The CDC recommends:

• Avoidance: Temporary solution for unimportant conflicts; reassess later.
• Accommodation: Ask participants to yield to others’ positions.
• Compromise: Everyone wins and gives up something when consensus is impossible.
• Collaboration: Best for important issues; requires acknowledging the conflict, considering solutions, and selecting alternatives that best meet the group’s needs.

Creating a supportive context for planning and action. Aspects influencing support: leadership, size and structure, organization, and diversity and integration.

• Leadership – Effective organizations have multiple leaders with a clear vision and the ability to listen and relate to others.
• Size and Structure – A maximum group size of 15 is recommended. Smaller “task forces” can be structured for specific functions.
• Organization – Allocate work to subcommittees for each sector (health organizations, businesses, schools) or work as a whole for smaller communities.
• Diversity and Integration – Include diverse participants: authorities, grassroots leaders, and residents with experience.

Offering ongoing encouragement. Provide positive feedback to group members, especially volunteers.

If facilitating diverse groups is challenging, having a “plan” for effective facilitation will yield the most positive outcomes.

Tips for Group Facilitation

The CDC’s PATCH documentation offers these suggestions:

• Create a conducive environment by seating participants around small tables or in semicircles.
• Make participation an expectation; ask questions frequently, especially open-ended ones.
• Create opportunities for teamwork.
• Give advance assignments.
• Encourage participants to evaluate the group’s dynamics and offer solutions.
• Talk with quiet participants during breaks to help them express ideas.
• Use flip charts to record comments, but face participants while writing or ask someone else to do it.
• Suggest the “next step” if a meeting stagnates.
• Walk around to gain attention, and look directly at participants.
• Expect mistakes! Acknowledge, correct, and move on.

Lead brainstorming sessions. Brainstorming is a problem-solving technique that encourages all members of a group to contribute ideas. Three common approaches include:

• Freewheeling: Participants call out suggestions randomly, recorded on a flip chart.
• Round robin: Each member suggests in turn, recorded on a flip chart.
• Slip: Anonymous suggestions are submitted on slips of paper, recorded on a flip chart.

The CDC suggests these guidelines for a brainstorming meeting:

• Explain rules at the beginning:

  • No critical remarks allowed; evaluation comes later.
  • Give the thought only; explanation comes later.
  • Give only one idea at a time.
  • Adding to or improving on someone else’s idea is appropriate.

• Give all participants a chance to share ideas.

• Ask one or two people to record ideas.

• Keep a lively tempo.

• Praise the quantity versus quality of ideas.

Convening and facilitating a planning group can be challenging yet rewarding. Skilled facilitation is needed for diverse individuals. Applying the guidelines presented above will help you successfully facilitate group meetings.

Develop an Action Plan to Address Proposed Changes

Your planning meetings, brainstorming sessions, and group discussions will yield many great ideas.

How do you sort through all that information?

First, distill the ideas into a common vision and mission. Then, refine the relevant ideas into objectives with corresponding strategies and actions.

The VMOSA process (vision, mission, objectives, strategies, and action) will help your planning group develop a blueprint for moving from dreams to actions. Complete the five components of VMOSA in order.

Vision

Your planning group needs a vision statement to unify the effort, communicate goals, attract participants, remind participants of the desired outcome, and guide decisions. The vision statement should be short phrases or a sentence. Examples include “Healthy teens,” “Safe streets, safe neighborhoods,” and “Education for all.”

Craft a vision statement that is:

• Understood and shared by members of the community
• Broad enough to include a diverse variety of perspectives
• Inspiring and uplifting
• Easy to communicate

Mission

Your planning group’s mission statement will be more specific than the vision. It expresses the “what and how” of your effort, describing what your group will do to make your vision a reality. An example is: “Our mission is to develop a safe and healthy neighborhood through collaborative planning, community action, and policy advocacy.”

While your vision statement inspires people to dream, your mission statement should inspire them to action.

Create your mission statement to be:

• Concise
• Outcome-oriented
• Inclusive

Objectives

Objectives are the specific, measurable steps that will help you achieve your mission. Develop objectives that are SMART+C: specific, measurable, achievable (eventually), relevant to your mission, and timed (with a date for completion). The +C reminds you to add another important quality to your goals: make them challenging!

Strategies

Strategies explain how your group will reach its objectives.

Broad strategies for change include:

• Advocacy
• Coalition building
• Community development
• Education
• Networking
• Policy or legislative change.

The Big Picture

Charting a logical pathway for community and system change: A key question to ask is, “What combination of changes in programs, policies, and practices are necessary to promote health for all?” Take inventory of potential changes by sorting ideas and objectives into five strategy categories:

• Providing information and enhancing skills
• Altering incentives and disincentives
• Modifying access, barriers, and opportunities
• Enhancing services and support
• Modifying policies and practices

Draft a one-page flowchart to form pathways leading logically to widespread behavior change and problem reduction. Double-check for gaps and identify potential resources and barriers for accomplishing objectives, which will be applied to developing action steps.

Determining Strategies Within Your Community’s Context

Once your planning group has a clear vision and mission and has chosen community and system changes, you will have the foundation for making informed decisions regarding strategies to implement. The information below is a guide to talking through the development of strategies as they relate to the priorities and desired changes in the context of your community.

When developing strategies to accompany your objectives, consider:

• Population levels to be affected
• Universal versus targeted outreach
• Personal and environmental factors
• Which community sectors can benefit from and contribute to efforts
• Behavioral strategies to be used

The levels to be targeted (individuals vs. families and kinship groups vs. organizations and sectors vs. broader systems).

Whether the strategy will be universal (e.g., include all of those who may be at risk or may benefit) or targeted (e.g., targets those who may be at greater risk for the problem):

• Universal example: targeting all men ages 40 and over in the community regarding the importance of prostate cancer screening.
• Targeted example: targeting all men ages 40 and over in the community with a family history of prostate cancer.

The personal and environmental factors to be addressed:

• Personal factors: knowledge, beliefs, skills, education and training, experience, cultural norms and practices, social status, cognitive or physical abilities, gender, age.
• Environmental factors: social support, available resources and services, barriers (including financial, physical, and communication), social approval, policies, environmental hazards, living conditions, poverty.

Individuals who can most benefit and contribute and how they can be reached or involved in the effort.

• Targets of change – those who may at particular risk for the issue and those whose actions (or omission of actions) contribute to the problem.
• Agents of change – those who may be in a position to (and have a responsibility to) contribute to the solution or initiative (includes targets of change)
• Community sectors through which targets and agents of change can be reached or involved

The behavior change strategies to be used. Approaches may include:

• Providing information and enhancing skills – Delivery of information or training through media, courses, workshops, webinars or other modes.
• Enhancing services and supports – Increasing, improving or expanding assistance or social or technical supports related to the identified goal(s). This could include expanding or changing components or offerings such as mental health or social services or expanding hours or to new locations.
• Modifying access, barriers, and opportunities – Changes in the environment (e.g., changes in office hours, reduced entry fees, changes to the built environment such as trails or lighting) that reduce barriers and improve access.
• Changing consequences – Changing the incentives or disincentives for outcomes. This might include public recognition or tax breaks. This might also take the form of implementation of policies that call for consequences to actions, such as a junk food tax.
• Modifying policies and broader systems – Changing existing policies or regulations at the organizational or governmental level to promote desired behaviors/ outcomes. This might take the form of written regulations or organizational policies.

For each strategy, consider what programs, policies, and/or practices should be created or modified. Make a list, keeping in mind how they work together to address the problem or goal. And finally, review your planning group’s strategies for:

• Consistency with the overall vision, mission, and objectives
• Goodness of fit with the resources and opportunities available
• Anticipated resistance and barriers and how they can be minimized
• Whether those who are affected will actually be reached
• Whether those who can contribute will be involved

Building consensus on proposed strategies for change Once you think that the strategies are finalized and in place, you will want to build consensus on proposed changes within your planning group. Keeping in mind the fact that multiple sectors of the community are represented in the planning group, you should complete two types of review:

• Review proposed changes for each sector

  • Taken together, do these proposed changes maximize this sector’s contribution to the mission
  • What other changes in programs, policies, or practices could or should be made in this sector

• Review proposed changes for all sectors taken together

  • Would all changes, taken together, be sufficient to reduce the problem?
  • What other changes in programs, policies, or practices could or should be made within the community or system?

• Furthermore, to help attract and preserve commitments on behalf of the sectors represented in your planning group, you should build consensus on the changes to be sought by asking:

  • “Is this proposed change important to the mission?”
  • “Is this proposed change feasible?”

You can even put these two questions into a survey format and create a table for planning group members to respond to. Before administering the survey, set criteria for which sought changes will be kept or eliminated with a ranking score system.

You can see below that a sample ranking system ranging from ‘1’ for “Not at All [Important or Feasible]” to ‘5’ for “Very [Important or Feasible]” has been used. We suggest that you set criteria of an average value of 3 or higher for a proposed change to be retained.

Proposed Change	How important is it to…	How feasible is it to…
	1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5	1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5
	1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5	1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5
	1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5	1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5

How do you calculate the average ranking score using a scale like the one in the table above?

Example:

For a proposed change, 20 planning group members select one of the score values in their response. Of those, you have:

• 10 responding “3”
• 4 responding “2”
• 6 responding “4”

Given the suggested criteria of an average ranking of 3 or higher, will you keep or toss the proposed change?

Step 1. 10(3) + 4(2) + 6(4) = 62

Step 2. 62 / 20 responses = an average ranking of 3.1

Step 3. Based on the scoring criteria, you determine to keep the proposed change since the overall consensus via the survey is 3.1.

What is most important about the process demonstrated above is that each group member participates in the consensus vote on each proposed change. And when you are finished, your community will be armed with a targeted action plan that has the approval of all community sector representatives.

The Grande Finale – The Complete Action Plan!

By now, you have come a long way in your action planning process. You have gathered information, involved key community members, outlined a vision, mission, objectives, and developed appropriate strategies for your community. In this final step of action plan development, you will specify in detail who will do what, by when, to make what changes happen. The action plan will also note the resources needed, potential barriers or resistance, and collaborators or communication lines that need to be active. You can rely on this plan to know what actions you should take day by day.

Action Step Criteria

Your action plan will consist of numerous action steps needed to bring about change in the community. Each action step should outline:

• What actions or changes will occur
• Who will carry out those changes
• By when the changes will take place, and for how long
• What resources are needed to carry out proposed changes
• Communication (who should know what?)

Drafting Action Steps

Action steps are similar to well-written objectives in their structure and content, but include some additional information. First, let’s start by looking at how to draft a strong objective. Then, we will take it one step further and write a comparable action step. You may already be working from objectives in a funded grant proposal. If that is the case, you have a time saving, solid foundation for your action steps.

The best action steps have several characteristics in common with well-written objectives. Those parallel characteristics are:

• Specific. That is, they tell how much (e.g., 40 %) of what is to be achieved (e.g., what behavior of whom or what outcome) by when (e.g., by 2010)?
• Measurable. Information concerning the objective can be collected, detected, or obtained from records (at least potentially).
• Achievable. Not only are the objectives themselves possible, it is likely that your organization will be able to pull them off.
• Relevant to the mission. Your organization has a clear understanding of how these objectives fit in with the overall vision and mission of the group.
• Timed. Your organization has developed a timeline (a portion of which is made clear in the objectives) by which they will be achieved.
• Challenging. They stretch the group to set its aims on significant improvements that are important to members of the community.

Example: Your community is working to establish on-site childcare for community health clinic clients by the year 2010. Based on the desired systems change, here is a sample action statement: “By June 2009, all necessary regulatory permits will be obtained.”

Now, let’s take this information and generate a complete action step. In addition to the criteria for well-written objectives, action steps address resources needed, anticipated barriers, and a communication plan. Now we will complete the five action step criteria (what, who, by when, what resources, and communication) using the sample, “By June 2009. . . “

Criteria 1: What actions or changes will occur?

All necessary regulatory permits will be obtained [for the on site provision of child care for health clinic clients.

Criteria 2: Who will carry out those changes?

Danelda Jackson and Tom Glinn, staff of the community health clinic

Criteria 3: By when will the changes take place, and for how long?

2009, in order to open in 2010. They will be renewed annually after that.

Criteria 4: What resources are needed to carry out the proposed changes? (For example, resources may be material, financial, or temporal).

Contractors

What potential barriers might affect this action step? Barriers to success might include:

• Faltering commitment on behalf of collaborators
• Key individuals or groups opposing efforts
• Lack of sustained interest in the initiative at the community level
• Simultaneous events such as economic downturn or parallel or competing initiatives
• City staff may resist providing a permit because it may appear to intensify the use of the clinic site.

Criteria 5: Communication (who should be informed about these actions?)

Clinic staff and patrons and community residents should be made aware of the availability of on site child care at the clinic.

Note: You may find it most helpful to set up a template for a table in a word processing program so you can efficiently record each action step generated by your planning group. The table below has been filled in with the criteria and sample information listed above.

Action Step	Action	By Whom	By When	Resources/Support Needed	Potential Barriers/Resistance	Communication
By June 2009, all necessary regulatory permits will be obtained.	All necessary regulatory permits will be obtained from childcare licensing agency, city government, etc.	Danelda Jackson and Tom Glinn, clinic staff	June 2009 in order to open in 2010	Contractors	City staff may resist providing a permit because it may appear to intensify the use of the clinic site.	Clinic staff and patrons and community residents should be made aware of the availability of on site child care at the clinic.

Review Your Action Plan for Completeness

Once the planning process is complete, be sure to obtain review and approval of the final action plan from all group members.

Assess the action plan for:

• Comprehensiveness
• Clarity
• Feasibility
• Timeliness
• Flexibility

Remember that the action plan will be revisited from time to time for modifications, as a community’s needs change. However, ultimately, this “blueprint for action” will be used over time, across sectors of the community, and across issues of interest. Therefore, strive to make it a powerful tool for community change.

Follow Through

Your completed action plan may contain many action steps. And while you will have mapped those out carefully along a timeline, you will probably have action steps that should occur simultaneously. Furthermore, you may sense a need to prioritize the order in which you execute action steps that are supposed to take place in the first six months of your initiative.

You may find it easier to determine that ordering or prioritization strategy if you ask the following questions:

• Which changes are the most important or key to the initiative’s objectives?
• Which changes would inspire and encourage participants and build credibility within the community?
• Which changes need to be completed before others can? For example, some changes may require other changes and relationships to be established.
• Which changes are easier or quicker? Could completing them give the planning group’s members a sense of success?

Part of following through with proposed action steps will be the task of maintaining collaborator commitment and interest. An invaluable approach to fostering this working relationship is communication: communication about timelines, upcoming planning meetings, progress, results, intermediary feedback, etc.

Communicate Progress

Communication is paramount to continued support and commitment within all sectors of the community. Continue to hold planning group meetings and additional public forum meetings, making sure to publicize these appropriately via local newspapers, email listservs, etc. Communicate with all relevant audiences, and let them know how their feedback was used to modify the action plan when relevant. You may want to refer back to the “communication” column of your action step table to make sure that you have corresponded with all people who need to know about the status of a particular action step.

It is best to include a communication plan in your action plan, and regularly share information about progress and outcomes relevant to the initiative. And the best means of having sound information to report is an evaluation plan.

Document Progress

After you have worked so hard to plan and implement action steps, your community group will most certainly want a means of measuring progress towards the vision. It is important to evaluate your initiative toward that end.

The purpose of evaluation is to document and measure the completion or success of action steps. From your action planning group’s perspective:

• Evaluation may help you clarify action steps so they are measurable.
• Documentation and evaluation help you continually refine your program. Remember—an action plan is an ever-changing blueprint that can be modified according to community needs. If evaluation of action steps reveals successes, failures, or other lessons learned, that information should be applied to future planning cycles or revision of the overall action plan.
• Evaluation data provide information about the relative costs and effort for tasks so activity and budget adjustments can be made as needed.

It is important to include evaluation components as you develop your action plan versus as you implement it. Be sure that your action plan details how information will be collected, analyzed, and communicated. Because the action plan will be implemented over a long period of time, you may want to document intermediary accomplishments on a monthly basis. Such cumulative records help you identify trends in rates of community and system change over a number of years

Celebrate Progress and Revisit/Renew the Action Plan

Even the most effective initiatives can benefit from reflection on their accomplishments. Therefore, you should review your action plan as frequently as needed, but at least annually. Arrange for ongoing review and discussion of group progress and proposed changes in the action plan. And, when new and important changes occur (e.g., a long-awaited policy change by a major employer), celebrate them.

Overall, focus on “small wins” versus creating “the perfect program.” This approach will:

• Reward outcomes versus actions
• Provide multiple opportunities for celebration
• Allow coalition partners to work together by asking each other to do their part while not demanding that everyone be locked into a single course of action
• Provide a sensitive measure of progress that can be monitored periodically to support improvement and accountability

Throughout evaluation of progress, celebration of progress, and renewal of the action plan as the community environment changes over time, maintain this key perspective:

Your community coalition is a catalyst for change, helping to bring about a series of community and system changes related to the mission, rather than simply the delivery of a single program or service. While evaluation has its place in all initiatives, try to focus more on contribution rather than attribution as your community implements its action plan.

In Summary

Action planning includes:

• Convening a planning group in your community that consists of:

  • Key officials
  • Grassroots leaders
  • Representatives of key sectors
  • Representatives from all parts of the community, including diverse ethnic, cultural, and socioeconomic groups

• Listening to the community

• Documenting problems that affect healthy youth development

• Identifying risk and protective factors

• Developing a framework for action

• Becoming aware of local resources and efforts

• Refining your group’s vision, mission, objections, and strategies

• Refining your group’ s choice of targets and agents of change

• Determining what community sectors should be involved in the solution

• Developing a tentative list of changes to be sought in each sector

• Building consensus on proposed changes

• Outlining action steps for proposed changes

• Documenting progress on bringing about community and system changes

• Renewing your group’ s efforts along the way

When you complete these activities, celebrate (for now) You have developed a blueprint for action.

Regardless of the complexity of the problem at hand within your community, action planning helps you:

• Understand the community’s perception of both the issue at hand and its potential solutions.
• Assure inclusive and integrated participation across community sectors in the planning process.
• Build consensus on what can and should be done based on the community’s unique assets and needs.
• Specify concrete ways in which members of the community coalition can take action.

Myles Horton, the late founder of the Highlander Center, talked about “making the road by walking.” The work of transforming communities and systems to promote healthy youth development will be made by joining with local people who care enough to make needed changes. As we do this important work, we realize that we walk the path of those before us. And, eventually, with those who will carry on this cause after we are gone.

Contributor

Sarah Pfau

Online Resources

Concerns Report Handbook: Planning for Community Health

Preventing Adolescent Substance Abuse: An Action Planning Guide for Community-Based Initiatives

Preventing Adolescent Pregnancy: An Action Planning Guide for Community-Based Initiatives

Preventing Youth Violence: An Action Planning Guide for Community-Based Initiatives

Preventing Child Abuse and Neglect: An Action Planning Guide for Community-Based Initiatives

Promoting Child Well-Being: An Action Planning Guide for Community-Based Initiatives

Promoting Health for All: Improving Access and Eliminating Disparities in Community Health

Promoting Healthy Living and Preventing Chronic Disease: An Action Planning Guide for Communities

Promoting Urban Neighborhood Development: An Action Planning Guide for Improving Housing, Jobs, Education, Safety and Health, and Human Development

Reducing Risk for Chronic Disease: An Action Planning Guide for Community-Based Initiatives

Youth Development: An Action Planning Guide for Community-Based Initiatives

Print Resources

Fawcett, S., Carson, V., Collie, V., Bremby, R., & Raymer, K. (May 2000). Promoting Health for All: An Action Planning Guide for Improving Access and Eliminating Disparities in Community Health. KU Work Group on Health Promotion & Community Development, Lawrence, Kansas.

Francisco, V., Holt, C., Swenson, J., & Fawcett, S. (November 2002). Youth Development: An Action Planning Guide for Community-Based Initiatives. KU Work Group on Health Promotion & Community Development, Lawrence, Kansas.

Puddy, R., Fawcett, S., & Francisco, V. (July 2002). Promoting Child Well-Being: An Action Planning Guide for Community-Based Initiatives. KU Work Group