Coachella Valley by the Numbers: In 2010, HARC found that 50$ of children age 6 to 17 had not had a discussion with their parents/guardians about sexual health and/or pregnancy. This puts them at risk for unplanned pregnancies. Making a Difference: Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest used HARC data to support their grant application to the California Personal Responsibility Program (CA PREP), administered by the California Department of Public health. Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest was awarded $1.7 million to present evidence-based programs to prevent teen pregnancy.

New community health data available

I apologize for my lengthy absence from blogging. Every three years, my (very small) nonprofit, HARC, conducts a huge community health survey and provides that information back to the community to use at no charge. Our once-every-three-years data release event occurred last week, and it took all of our attention for the past three months.

Note: For those of you interested in Coachella Valley, California health, check out the report we released last week: it’s packed with information and easier than ever to digest!

Whenever I write this blog, I try to frame it broadly—“this is what we do to impact our community, but it could easily be transplanted to your community”. Today, though, I’m going to get a little local. I can’t help it, it’s a big milestone for HARC.

Blog & Updates

Graph of prevalence vs. severity

But how do I pick?! Prioritizing needs

Last week I talked about how needs assessments are a great way to find out what your target audience needs, and what programs would be best to meet those needs. But what if you do a needs assessment, and it turns out that your constituents need about 1,000,000 things to have a happy, healthy, productive life? What do you do then?

None of us have limitless resources to spend on addressing the needs in our community. And as much as we’d like to fix everything, that’s just not humanly possible, especially in the very disadvantaged communities or the very vulnerable groups of constituents. So we end up focusing our time, effort, and resources on needs that are both common and that have serious consequences. Prevalence and severity are the name of the game in needs assessments.

Blog & Updates