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Community Assessments

Visit the ACT Youth Network Sexual Health Pages

ACT for Youth Highlight

For more on assessing community resources for adolescent sexual health, see this 20-minute presentation by Robert Francis, ABCD Institute faculty member:

Community Resources Assessment

Narrated Presentation

Community Assessments are the first step in a larger planning process for communities seeking to improve adolescent sexual health outcomes. See Planning for Evidence-Based Programming to learn about a widely-used, comprehensive planning process, and Adapting Evidence-Based Programs for information about which program adaptations are appropriate and which should be avoided.

Activity: Community Resources Wheel

Using this Community Resources Wheel (PDF: 10K) as a worksheet, think broadly about sectors in the community that might have resources and assets to share. Each section in the community wheel represents a different sector. Thinking about your community, start by concretely naming groups and organizations you know in each sector. While some sectors may have been unlikely partners in the past, they may have resources that could be helpful for a prevention initiative. You may find that it is helpful to think beyond traditional partners.

Think too about what each sector stands to gain if your initiative is able to achieve its goals. The Engaging Partners section of this website focuses more generally on positive youth development initiatives, but may be a springboard for ideas as you consider engaging partners in your sexual health promotion efforts.

This Resources Assessment Tool (PDF: 56K) can also be used to detail a community's resources.

Comprehensive Community Assessments

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A thorough assessment of community needs and resources will help you develop the adolescent pregnancy and STD/HIV prevention strategy that best fits your community. It can also be a powerful tool in calling your community to action.

Defining Community

Before we start with the assessment process, it is helpful to clarify what we mean by community. Often data are presented by political/geographical units such as counties or zip codes. These do not necessarily describe the social environments young people grow up in.

When gathering descriptive data on adolescent sexual risk-taking behaviors and the risk and protective factors that influence these behaviors (see "Risk and Protective Factors" below), it will be necessary to consider social settings beyond political-geographical boundaries. Consider, for example, individual schools, ethnic neighborhoods, or identity communities such as the GLBT community.

Community Needs Assessment

Demographics and Prevalence

The first step in any prevention effort is to describe the problem as it exists now. What are the adolescent pregnancy and STD/HIV rates in your community, for example? Demographic data are also important in helping us understand who is most affected. Useful data are available online; see these New York State Data Sources.

Risk and Protective Factors

To plan effective interventions, we also need to describe the specific risk and protective factors that affect youth in our community. Research has identified many factors that influence adolescent sexual risk-taking behaviors. An adolescent who experiences risk factors without counter-balancing protective factors is more likely to run into serious trouble. Communities and program providers can have an impact on some of these factors, but not all. Risk and protective factors are associated with communities, friends and peers, romantic/sexual relationships, and the individual's own values and attitudes. Examples include:

Community: Exposure to violence and substance use are risk factors.
Families: Generally speaking, the presence of both biological parents is a protective factor, while a permissive parenting style is a risk factor.
Friends and peers: When a teen's friends are using drugs, performing poorly in school, or engaging in unprotected sex, his or her own risk is increased.
Romantic partners: A large age difference is one risk factor.
Individual: The adolescent's own values and attitudes toward sex show the strongest connection to sexual behavior, in some cases making a teen more likely to engage in risky behavior (risk factor) and in others making it less likely (protective factor). Individual characteristics unrelated to sex may also have an impact. Having plans for the future, for example, protects against teen pregnancy.

Community-wide youth development initiatives and prevention programs can have an impact on some of these factors, but not all.

For a detailed description of risk and protective factors, see Sexual Risk & Protective Factors (PDF: 311K) by Kirby and Lepore, published by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.

Community data on risk and protective factors are not easily accessible. Existing community assessments (such as those carried out by the United Way) may be useful, and data can also be collected through surveys and interviews of individuals and groups such as:

Adolescents
Stakeholders working with youth (YMCA, DSS, prevention providers, youth ministries, community centers, foster care, etc.)
Health care providers (pediatricians, school nurses, hospitals, clinics, etc.)
School staff

For help with planning how to collect the information you'll need, use ACT for Youth's Data Collection Planning Tool (PDF: 151K).

Community Resources Assessment

A detailed and community-specific needs assessment is just the first step. Understanding community resources is also important, because these resources can be deployed to address the issues identified by the needs assessment. The Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) framework offers an innovative, strengths-based approach to assessing a community's resources.

Robert Francis, ABCD faculty member, introduces youth workers and planners in the field of adolescent sexual health to the ABCD approach in this 20-minute ACT for Youth presentation on Community Resources Assessment.
The ABCD Institute offers the helpful community mobilization manual Discovering Community Power (PDF: 2.0M). Of special interest are the sample community asset map (pages 15-16) and the sample organizational asset map (pages 19-20).