What are the four criteria for determining prioritization of health conditions or problems?
The community health assessment should provide a foundation to identify health priority areas that will be addressed in a community health improvement plan. Identifying priorities using criteria and defined processes helps to ensure that the most important issues are addressed, and it provides an oportunity to involve community members and secure buy-in from stakeholders
(Community Tool Box).
Method Description County Health Rankings & Roadmaps: Prepare to Prioritize A part of the County Health Rankings & Roadmaps Action Center, this resource focuses on how to prepare for prioritization. It provides questions to consider when prioritizing health issues, possible processes for prioritization, and other factors to consider when determining that process, such as the role of the
facilitator. County Health Rankings & Roadmaps: Prioritize the Issues This resource is also a part of the County Health Rankings & Roadmaps Action Cycle. It links to three tools: avoiding group think, the nominal group technique, and an
example of a priority-setting exercise. NACCHO First Things First: Prioritizing Health Problems In addition to step-by-step instructions for five prioritization methods, this document also includes blank templates that can be used in the prioritization process. Prioritization methods included in this document are the Multi-Voting Technique, Strategy Grids, the Nominal Group Technique, the Hanlon Method, and the Prioritization Matrix. NACCHO Tip Sheet: Prioritizing Issues in a Community Health Improvement Process The National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) produced a tip sheet for prioritizing community health issues. The tip sheet explains criteria that are frequently used for prioritization, suggests strategies for meaningful engagement, and outlines five prioritization methods: Control and Influence, Prioritization Matrix, ‘Dotmocracy’ Method, Multi-Voting Technique, and the Hanlon Method. Community Tool Box: Developing and Using Criteria and Processes to Set Priorities This section of the Community Tool Box provides background information about establishing priorities. The “Tools” tab provides a list of prioritization methods to choose from. By the end of your needs assessment work, you will have identified a number of health problems in your community. These problems may include a high incidence of malaria, TB, HIV/AIDS, and childhood diarrhoea. You should ensure that you have a list of all the problems you have identified. You may also have identified some of the possible causes of health problems (Figure 13.1). These could include unhealthy practices such as smoking cigarettes or excessive alcohol consumption. Another possible cause that you might have been able to identify is unhelpful beliefs, such as that malnutrition is caused by bad spirits, or that dirty water causes malaria. Peer influences could also be identified as a cause of some health problems (Figure 13.2). For example, an individual who has malaria may want to visit the health facility to get treatment. However, his friend may want him to go visit a traditional healer. Figure 13.2 Peer influences may be important in determining alcohol consumption levels. (Photo: Tom Heller) Once you have identified and listed the main community health problems and their causes, the next step is to prioritise these problems — because it may be difficult for you to address all of these problems at the same time. Prioritisation is the process of arranging the problems in order of the urgency in which they need to be addressed. Highly urgent and important problems are put at the top of your list — and less important and less urgent problems put at the bottom. During needs assessment you may identify as many as 20 different community health problems, but you cannot address all of these at the same time. You now have to prioritise and put them in the order of importance to the health of the community. Problem prioritisation is not arbitrary, but should use certain established criteria. There are five basic criteria you can use to prioritise problems. Look carefully at Box 13.1. It describes the criteria you can use to prioritise the problems you have identified in your community, in order to decide which ones should be tackled first. Box 13.1 Criteria to prioritise problems
Activity 13.1 Scoring criteria for prioritisationKnowing the criteria alone cannot help you to set priorities. This activity will demonstrate to you how to score these five criteria, so that you are able to arrange your problems in order of their importance. In the example set out in Table 13.1, each health problem has been scored on a range of one to five. A minimum score would be one. This indicates that there is very little concern for that health problem. The maximum score of five would be given for a problem that was thought to be very severe. The scores for each problem have been added up in the final column, and a rank has been given for each problem. The rank indicates the priority — a problem that is ranked 1 is the most important. Table 13.1 Prioritising — scoring and ranking health problems.
The second option you have available in prioritising health problems is to ask a group of stakeholders, such as community members or other health workers, to prioritise the problems according to their knowledge and experience. How many problems do you select to address? That really depends on your capacity, and the resources you have to deal with them. For further information, take a look at our frequently asked questions which may give you the support you need. Have a question? If you have any concerns about anything on this site please get in contact with us here. Report a concern What is Prioritisation criteria?What Is Project Prioritization? Project prioritization is the process of determining which potential and existing projects are the most urgent and important. This process involves evaluating the criteria that are most relevant to your business and applying them to all of your projects.
What are the three types of prioritization categories?3 Ways to Prioritize. QUADRANT 1: Important + Urgent. ... . QUADRANT 2: Important + Not-Urgent. ... . QUADRANT 3: Not Important + Urgent. ... . QUADRANT 4: Not Important + Not Urgent.. What is prioritization healthcare?Patient prioritization refers to the process of ranking referrals in a certain order based on various criteria with the aim of improving fairness and equity in the delivery of care.
What is setting health priorities in community diagnosis?Prioritizing means establishing a hierarchy of identified problems in order to determine priorities for intervention, i.e., classifying health problems according to their importance, effectiveness, and the feasibility of proposed interventions10.
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