250 - Designing Intersectional Needs Assessments: How to Responsibly Engage Spanish-speaking and Rural Communities to Improve Community Health

Abstract Information: Community Health Assessments (CHA) are a type of needs assessment that provide a snapshot of a community’s health and highlight priority community needs. Engaging community members directly through focus groups and interviews is key to understanding how health needs impact lives and what gaps and opportunities exist to improve health outcomes. Many communities throughout the United States are comprised of rural and/or non-English language preference (NELP) individuals and yet needs assessments do not often consider or include these voices. NELP perspectives are crucial to understanding health needs in an intersectional manner, acknowledging that social identities can play a role in systemic health inequities. More importantly, inclusive CHAs can identify inherent strengths in NELP and rural communities to better support health and wellness. Intersectional needs assessments can thus be a valuable evaluation tool for community engagement and health promotion. We engaged rural, NELP communities, specifically Spanish speakers, as we conducted several CHAs throughout Washington State, to better understand unique health needs, gaps, and opportunities for health improvement in their communities. Our approach asks participants to reflect on topics that affect a person’s health including food access, transportation access, mental health, housing, and childcare. We want to know more than just whether someone is sick or healthy or if they have access to a doctor. Informed by the structural determinants of health (SDOH) model, we engage often marginalized communities to identify multilevel factors that impact community health including stigma, racism, and structural inequalities.  Our data collection approach includes partnerships with community groups and facilitation by a fluent Spanish speaker. This demonstration will focus on how to use intersectional and iterative qualitative methodology to enhance the needs assessment process, focusing specifically on how to responsibly engage with rural and/or NELP communities to conduct focus groups and interviews, how to center ethical data collection principles to gain trust and connection, and how to create beautiful reporting that prioritizes making findings accessible and usable for a wide audience. We will present diverse and multilingual voices to highlight the nuanced perspectives that are gained when intentionally designing a more inclusive and intersectional CHA.