Purpose and Benefits of CHANGE
When community leaders find themselves interested in qualitative changes in current living and health conditions, they can turn to CHANGE to facilitate strategic planning. CHANGE is an effective tool for communities to help prioritize and manage problems (Community health, 2018). In particular, leaders can implement more streamlined resource management or collectively seek help from power structures to address individual community issues.
CHANGE has several key advantages that make it a truly working social tool. First of all, CHANGE brings individuals together by interest and thus creates a stronger, collective capacity to solve a problem. Second, the tool seeks to generate natural and relevant societal demands and comprehensively reflect the current agenda. Third, CHANGE has valuable practical applications: this management model offers concrete suggestions and examples, and feedback on implementing social change.
Community Change Process
To complete a community needs assessment according to CHANGE, it is recommended using the studied Community Change Process, CCP. Thus, the CCP consists of five sequential steps: commitment, assessment, planning, implementation, and evaluation (Community change, 2018). The first step focuses on selecting proactive coalition members who are charged with the responsibility of representing the community’s interests. The organization’s strategy of action is explored in the third step, preceded by a qualitative assessment of the current needs and expectations of the participants. Once the plan is ready, the group is ready to begin the fourth step, which implements the steps in a timely fashion. Finally, the evaluation completes the CCP process and gives an indication of how effective and beneficial the steps are: it is essential to emphasize that the evaluation is not the final part but accompanies CCP throughout its management.
CCP and Nursing process
In some ways, it might seem that CCP is similar to the Nursing process. In fact, the second model also includes five steps, but the sequence is different (Toney-Butler & Thayer, 2020). This consists of assessment, diagnosis, planning, implementation, and evaluation. As one can see, both concepts have essentially the same set of phases and focus on qualitative changes in current conditions. However, CCP has a focus on changing the lives of all communities, while the Nursing process provides clinical care.
Five Sectors of CHANGE
Finally, when planning for CHANGE, the community must ensure that the strategy developed covers all five sectors. The first focuses on improving the social and built environment, including improving accessibility (Five sectors, 2018). Ignoring the first sector will not allow the community to achieve results in the environment. The CIO sector, by contrast, aims to improve conditions from social institutions and agencies rather than the environment. In this context, change must be supported by organizations in order to be embodied. The third sector is also essential because it focuses on improving the accessibility of health services to the community. The fourth sector has a focus on educational centers, initiating improvements in learning environments. Finally, the fifth sector is extremely useful for adults, as it focuses on qualitative changes in working conditions. These areas form the big picture of the agenda and give a comprehensive projection of strategies.
References
Community change process and the CHANGE tool. (2018). CDC. Web.
Community health assessment and group evaluation (CHANGE): Building a foundation of knowledge to prioritize community needs. (2018). CDC. Web.
Five sectors of CHANGE tool. (2018). CDC. Web.
Toney-Butler, T. J., & Thayer, J. M. (2020). Nursing process. NCBI. Web.
