**14. Community assessment**

Community (or needs) assessment is "a systematic set of procedures undertaken for the purpose of setting priorities and making decisions about program or organizational improvement and allocation of resources. The priorities are based on identified needs" [107]. Diverse forms of data, together with epidemiologic (quantitative) data, qualitative information, health inequalities on data, as well as health resource utilization patterns, might include a variation of community assessment. The first part of community or need assessment is very important in identifying a problem or an issue. A community assessment typically could begin through looking at baseline sources or background information about health issues in a community. These may comprise data from primary as well as secondary sources. Primary data encompass novel information collection on specific programs or study through using techniques like a community examination, focus groups and interviews, etc. Although, the community might mean people who reside inside a specified geographic area or as people sharing a communal experience or share a specific cultural or social identity sense [100]. When doing the assessment, it is likewise necessary in order to appropriately portray the spectrum of community members, toward recognizing any subgroups around the community of interest (for instance, adolescence, adults on lower-income). Hence, community

### *'Silent Pandemic': Evidence-Based Environmental and Public Health Practices to Respond… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.100204*

assessments might thus involve an attempt to recognize mortality as well as morbidity, environmental and organizational circumstances, current policies, along with significant associations between stakeholders. Community assessments examine the community health concerns, the variables influencing the health in a community (for instance, health determinants), and the resources, assets, as well as difficulties influencing these factors [107]. Assessment, ideally is a community process by which stakeholders together with members of the community and a wide range of community-based as well as government organizations turn out to be partners in community assessment as well as a shift from assessment toward action planning. While, community assessments remain critical toward ensuring appropriate priorities are been carried out. This is for the reason that they can make available an understanding of the importance of the community setting so that priorities stay planned, designed as well as implementing ways to leverage as well as maximizing the community benefit. Additionally, the assessments can be recognized (as well as in some cases improve) support aimed at specific priorities' methods. This significant support is garnering resources as well as safeguarding an intervention that is successful. Assessments can likewise be an important baseline measure for a series of circumstances. Hence, assessing community characteristically arises before program development or policy as well as seeks toward comprehending the public/ environmental health challenges as well as interventions in a specified community. It likewise begins toward recognizing recent resources previously in place toward addressing this apprehension. Data is occasionally obtained from national as well as local data sets in addition to surveillance systems. Another useful information at this level is a written contextual documentation, or setting, within which the problem of health is happening, together with social assessment, economic, as well as physical conditions. Data for assessing community may be collected with qualitative (e.g., individual or group interviews) or quantitative (e.g., questionnaires) methods. The decision concerning what to look for need to remain guided through the assessment goal. For example, a youth-focused assessment may include factors other than age assessment. For example, an adolescence focused assessment may comprise diverse elements other than focusing on adult's assessment who are older. Bearing in mind, there remain likewise some useful general guiding principle to consider when engaged in assessment planning. It is remarkable toward assessing factors in particular along the full ecologic series of factors influencing the health of population as well as well-being, in doing so, including the community assets, besides not just the challenges. Ecologic frameworks indicate the influence on the behavior modification as well as social health of the individual and contextual factors [101]. Numerous changes have been proposed to the ecologic framework [55]. Based on work conducted, it is useful to consider assessment of factors at five levels:


The use of the ecologic framework makes it possible to assess indigenous community people (their health as well as wellness and people's behaviors), the agencies as well as the organizations serving the community, and the milieu within which members of the community reside [35, 69, 108]. In detail, the greatest effective priorities act at multiple levels because societies are people who communicate with each other on different social networks within a specific context; thus, need assessment should help to understand this extensive variety of factors in general. Hence, **Table 3** shows a number of probable ecologic framework indicators aimed at each of these stages.
