As a SEARCH participant, you are required to complete two assessment tools—the Cultural Assessment Questionnaire and the Community Assessment Inventory. These tools have been designed to help you become aware of other issues that influence health care in a community.

When you work in a community setting, you need to understand and be cognizant of the community dynamic that surrounds you. Many things within the community influence the health and the health care of the people. In order to help the community members, you need to gain their trust by understanding their way of life and their perspective. By looking at the bigger picture and understanding community health, you will become a better primary care clinician. Therefore, the SEARCH program has developed two assessment tools that can guide you to attaining this level of awareness and gaining a community perspective on health care.

Cultural Assessment Questionnaire

The design of this assessment is to have you interview a patient, in a confidential setting, and find out about any of their cultural beliefs and/or traditions that can impact their health and health care. Explain to the patient that the purpose of the interview is just to gain a better understanding on how their personal beliefs, traditions, and practices may influence their health. This questionnaire is to be used as a guide that you should refer to when interviewing the patient, however we encourage you to have a conversation with the patient and not just read-off these questions. You should look at this as an opportunity to learn about someone’s background and their perception on health.

We would like to emphasize that “culture” pertains to everybody and not just to foreign-born individuals or racial minorities. “Culture” should be considered a broad term that not only includes race and ethnicity but also encompasses language, gender, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, physical and mental capacity, age, religion, housing status, and regional differences. 1 In addition to these differences, cultural values, traditions, norms, beliefs, and history shape how people live and how they react to medical services and interventions. Culture is such an important factor to consider within this diverse country, and as a health care provider it is beneficial to become competent in addressing and understanding these influences on health behaviors and on perceptions of health care. It is equally important to address your own personal beliefs on cultural diversity so that you may either overcome any personal barriers or at least acknowledge any unresolved issues that you may have.

We hope this tool can give you a glimpse of how one patient’s approach to health care may differ from others because of certain cultural influences. If you would like more information on cultural competency, visit the "Cultural Competency" section under the "Web Resources" page of the IL SEARCH website.

Community Assessment Inventory

This assessment is comprised of a few pages to guide you on doing an inventory of the community. The assessment was designed for you to gather both quantitative and qualitative data on the community (the geographic community as well as the community of people that the health center serves). In order to truly understand and serve the members of the community as well as become a trusted resource, it is beneficial for a health care provider to know what the “community” is comprised of, what the major health problems and underlying issues are, and the resources that are available within the community.

The infrastructure of community health is determined by the interactive dynamic between its members and the community itself. The assessment of this infrastructure can be broken down into two basic elements—the needs/problems of the community and the resources/assets of the community. Many institutions focus on the needs and the problems of communities, especially underserved/low-income areas. It is important to understand what problems are evident amongst the community so that culturally sensitive interventions can properly address those areas. However the assets of the community are equally important because it is vital that resources are available to combat these problems that are affecting the community health. Since many health problems in underserved communities are complex and involve several underlying factors, resources of the community, including health providers, need to work together and partner with one another to address some of these factors that directly and indirectly impact the community’s health.

By doing a community assessment and becoming aware of the surrounding environment, you can understand your patients’ perspectives and also be able to refer them to any community resource that is available to them. We hope this tool gives you a new way to look at a community and its members and understand the bigger picture and the role you may play within it.

How should you gather data for the assessment? You can get the information from your health center, visit several of the websites listed on our "Web Resources" webpage, consult a local resource guide or governmental office, etc. You can also talk to patients, community members, community leaders, other organizations, health care workers, etc. In order to get a better idea of the community layout, you may want to do a windshield tour and drive through the community itself. If you feel unsafe in doing so, you may want to get a few workers together and have a trusted community member show you around. There are many ways you can find information on the community, however it does take time and we suggest that you start early and continually gather information throughout your whole rotation.

For some helpful websites, please look under the "Community Assessment" section under the "Web Resources" page of the IL SEARCH website.