Charles J. Wiltraut - Community Health Development Specialist

Community Discussion Groups

Purpose:

This is the most interactive and dynamic aspect of the Community and Population Health Status Assessment (CHSA). Community discussion groups allow me to identify health issues and the availability and application of local social capital for health status improvement.
To see how community leaders, providers, and consumers describe their community in regards to community trends and themes and community perceptions of health and health services which are important for understanding the health of the community.
On-site interaction and exchange with community members is an invaluable means to gathering information- data often unobtainable by any other means.
Information gathered from community discussions is qualitative, and consists of perceptions of critical issues and challenges.
The discussion group findings also yield a "database" of community resources, community contacts and key individuals, and a list of collaborative efforts that can be built on when future health improvement strategies are implemented.
A subtle but important aspect of this step is listening -- truly listening -- to a community's health needs, interests and advice. Listening will facilitate an important analysis step, which is comparing what was heard with the picture created by the secondary data collected prior to the discussions.

Data Awareness: during community discussion groups, we discover what resources are available where; and who holds what data. From here, we are able to coordinate a data and information exchange process.
Relationships: the community discussion process allows for the connecting or re-connecting of providers, leaders, and consumers.

Participants:

Community intermediaries (defined as organizations or persons who have relationships, and therefore access to, groups of interest in the assessment process) are again involved at this point in the strategy. The role of these intermediaries is to organize and manage community discussion groups.
The community discussion groups are conducted with a team of resource holders and a facilitator.
Resource holders attend community discussion groups that are organized by the community intermediaries into "types" of meetings: meetings with community leaders, meetings with providers of health and human services, and meetings with community residents.

The Agenda:

Participants define their community, the challenges they face individually or as a community, the current resources available to address challenges and advice for addressing issues and challenges, and existing or past, successful collaborative efforts to address community issues.
Questions from resource holders involved in the discussions are also incorporated into the facilitation. The agenda and all the information from the discussion is captured on a newsprint flip chart, as well as on a laptop computer if available.
Follow-up.
Community linkage.

Meeting Process:

Discussion participants usually fill out a sign-in sheet. A final report, and potentially a follow-up meeting will be convened by the resource holders to report out the information that has been gathered in the discussion groups.