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2014-2019 Community Needs and Assets Assessment & Action Planning Process | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
You are invited to participate in the final stages of the Needs and Assets Assessment and Action Planning Process for the City of Fall River and the towns of Somerset, Swansea and Westport, MA
Read the description to the right for details of what has been done and what opportunities are available during the month of June to provide input into the final Plan.
Input will also be accepted until June 21st by clicking on the Public Feedback Form at this link
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Every five years, Greater Fall River Partners for a Healthier Community, Inc. (Partners) conducts a community-wide health needs and assets assessment upon which an Action Plan for the following five-year period is built. The process occurred first in 2004 with the creation of the Healthy City Fall River initiative that used a citywide survey to create the first five-year Action Plan for the City. It was enlarged again in 2009 with the addition of the Mass In Motion initiative that shifted to a focus on system, policy and environmental changes to support healthier lifestyles. The most recent Action Planning Process began in September 2013 with the designation of eight short-term Task Forces (see chart, below) mobilized around a subset of issues related to the health of the community. These groups of between five and twenty people were convened to review the available data on both needs and assets, including 129 Data Sources and 30 Videotaped Key Informant Interviews, and were then be asked to come up with a list of no more than ten recommendations, listed in order of priority. A comprehensive data assessment for the four-town area was published in January 2014, and additional meetings were then held in January, February and March with representatives of populations who are at greater risk including: 1) youth, 2) seniors, 3) persons whose native language is not English, 4) persons with behavioral health diagnoses, and 5) members of racial and ethnic groups in Fall River. Finally, two special meetings were convened to consider behavioral health issues from a systems perspective. The findings were reviewed at a series of Community Health Assessment Forums in April and May where representatives of all eight Task Forces were invited to present their findings. This group then prioritized the top sixty recommendations that constituted the Proposed Action Plan. This Plan will then be reviewed for final input at:
A final Action Plan will be reviewed and approved at the June 26th Design Team meeting of Partners for a Healthier Community to be held from 8:30 to 10:00 a.m. in the Community Room of HealthFirst Family Care Center, 387 Quarry Street, Fall River. All events are open to the public. 2014-2019 Planning Task Force Leadership
An outline of the entire process is available at: 2014-2019 Action Planning Process Outline Tables
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