PHC Center Implementation Process:
Assessing Your Needs

Each Community Is Unique

The first step toward establishing a Primary Healthcare Center involves a careful assessment of the needs of your community or catchment area. As you begin this process, keep in mind that just as each individual patient comes into the system with his or her own unique concerns, the community as a whole can also be understood as a single entity that is plagued by common health problems.

In regions that have experienced conflict, for example, a focus on mental health issues might need to be incorporated into the primary healthcare model. For other communities, cardiovascular disease, asthma, or HIV/AIDS may affect a large number of people, so programs that focus on these issues would need to be a vital component of the Primary Healthcare Center that is established.

Prior to developing programs and equipping the Primary Healthcare Centers, AIHA partners conducted community health assessments to determine the healthcare priorities that their clinic must address. Once this had been determined, partners moved forward to create the centers by selecting tangible components such as clinic space and equipment, as well as determining organizational structures and training requirements.

Focus Groups Can Provide Valuable Data

A focus group is a form of qualitative research in which a group of people are asked their opinions about a number of topics. Questions are asked in a relaxed, interactive group setting where participants are free to talk with other group members.

Focus group data in general has been shown to have a high rate of validity, primarily because concepts discussed are generally easy for participants to understand and therefore the results are also believable. Other benefits of focus groups include low cost, as well as the fact that researchers can get results relatively quickly, and can increase the sample size of a report by talking with several people at once.

• Initial Assessment
  When AIHA partners in the United States first met with their counterparts in other nations, the groups convened and filled out this assessment. This comprehensive document covers a range of topics that may also be relevant to your work.
• Focus Group Questionnaire
  Youth risk behaviors affect most regions and nations and this questionnaire deals with this topic. But even if youth risk is not something you wish to research at this time, you may still wish to use and adapt this document.
• SWOT Analysis
  Each AIHA partner establishing a Primary Healthcare Center learned how to conduct a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats (or “SWOT”) analysis of their environment. Click the link above to see this document.
• Women’s Wellness Centers
  Although focused on women’s wellness issues, these three documents are valuable instruments that have been designed by AIHA partners that could be easily adapted for a Primary Healthcare Center.
      Women's Health Needs Assessment Survey
      Women's Health Initiative Assessment Checklist
      Women's Health Needs Focus Group Questions

Continue reading about the Assessment process.