Health related needs assessment

Prior to planning a public health intervention, it is imperative to conduct a needs assessment in order to directly learn from community members what their most relevant health issues are. Performing a needs assessment also allows researchers to learn more generally about the ‘day to day’ of the community, and the families within it, and gives them the opportunity to build rapport with community members. Though we simultaneously conducted health workshops addressing a couple issues that we were already informed were relevant to individuals in the community, one of our primary purposes during this first trip to Sierra Leone was to conduct assessment interviews with the community members and leaders. As a team, we were able to speak with over 50 children and 40 adults. Here are a couple personal accounts we gathered.