In this activity, you will develop a plan for a community need assessment directed to mothers, infants, or children that you may have seen or heard about in your country.

Step 1: Identify

Think of an important nutrition problem affecting mothers, infants, or children that you may have seen or heard about in your country which you would feel confident describing to a peer.

Step 2: Develop

Develop a plan to assess this community with the following steps:

• Identify and assemble a diverse community team
• Who should be part of the team on this plan? And Why? Hospital Administrator, Civic Leader, Law enforcer, etc
• Develop a team strategy
• Define: goals, how data will be used, timeline, role and responsibilities, etc.  
• Identify scope of assessment
• Define the region or neighborhood, the sectors within the area, and components to assess such as nutrition status and eating habits
• Develop questions to ask
• Ask to learn about the strengths and weaknesses of specific community components within each sector
• Select sites
• Are the locations within each sector your team will visit to conduct the needs assessment
• Determine data collection methods
• A combination of 2 or more data-collection methods is recommended at each site to confirm or support initial findings. 
• Identify key informants
• For each sector and site your team has identified for the assessment, contact people in the community who can provide the appropriate insight, knowledge, or documentation.

Conduct this plan to assess the community needs:

• Identify the perceived needs, expressed needs, absolute needs, and relative needs around nutrition. 
• Briefly provide a plan to solve the perceived needs of the community.

Step 3: Respond

Respond by writing 400-500 words that cover all of the required information stated above.

Step 4: Share

To share your work, click on the “Add a new discussion topic” button under this post and paste your work in the “Message” box. Make sure that you have addressed all the required information. Please ensure to reference others’ intellectual property when necessary. All references should follow 7th Edition APA formatting. For further instructions, see the resource on the Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library: APA citation resource (N.B. references are excluded from word counts).

Step 5: Interact

Evaluate and categorize the work from one of your peers based on items A - D of this rubric. Provide a rationale for the grade you provided, as well as comments or suggestions for improvement. To post a reply, click “Reply” on a particular discussion, write your feedback and then click on “Post to forum.” You can use the list below as an example:

Item A is  .…. because….  My suggestions for improvement are….
Item B is  .…. because….  My suggestions for improvement are….
Item C is  .…. because….  My suggestions for improvement are….
Item D is  .…. because….  My suggestions for improvement are….

OPTIONAL Step 6: Interact (10 minutes)

If you would like to, you can reply to your peers' posts in a respectful and professional manner. Ensure that your post engages your peers' ideas by including a reflection on their comments, sharing ideas of other potential difficulties and parties involved, or asking thought-provoking questions. If a peer comments on your posting, please reply. To post a reply, click “Reply” on a particular discussion, write your feedback and then click on “Post to forum.”