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Strategies for Developing a Health Ministry Needs Assessment

Conducting a needs assessment is an essential ingredient in any health promotion program. Such an assessment of the population provides direction and focus as well as efficient use of resources. For a health ministry, it will provide insights into the health needs of the congregation, enabling church leaders to better meet those needs.

  1. Identify stake-holders

    • The first step is to form a committee with representatives who will be involved in every step of the process. A balanced committee may include one or more church leaders, a member of the congregation who is a health professional, members who have special insight into their local community issues and members who have an interest in health. Those uninterested or resistant should also be included. The health ministry leader may already have an issue in mind. For example, it may be that there are a high number of congregants living with diabetes. If this is the case, then having someone with this disease on the committee may be helpful.

    Do your research

    • Data can help pinpoint needs and provide support for tackling an issue. Start with data from the larger community. If diabetes is the concern, what are the rates of diabetes in the community?

    Ask your target population

    • After examining the community data, the committee will take the top health issues and survey the congregation. This can be done in many ways, through anonymous questionnaires, focus groups, or interviews, to name a few. Once the data is analyzed, health issues can be prioritized according to high morbidity or mortality rates, high interest from the congregation and whether the intervention or program can impact the problem.

    Set goals and objectives

    • Once the committee has arrived at a health priority according to the data gained from community and congregation, it's time to set goals and objectives. What does the health ministry hope to accomplish with the health program? Is it behavior change, like diet or exercise? Is it education about the health issue to increase awareness or knowledge among the parishioners? A goal is written in broad terms, while an objective is more specific, telling how the goal will be reached and by when.
      -Sample goal: The Diabetes Education Workshop will raise awareness about
      Type II Diabetes among members.
      -Sample objective: 50 percent of church members will show an increase in
      knowledge of Type II Diabetes following the Diabetes Education Workshop,
      as evidenced by a pre- and post-test.

    Implement and evaluate program

    • Depending on the goals and objectives, the health ministry committee will implement a program or intervention based on the needs of the target population. Once complete, an evaluation should be done to assess the program's effectiveness. The evaluation should be used to determine if the goals and objectives were met. If the intervention is an educational workshop designed to raise awareness about diabetes, a pre- and post-test can be done to assess if parishioners gained knowledge from the program. If the intervention is focused on behavior change, other methods to measure that change can be used, such as self-report surveys.

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