How to Get Started
Overview
As part of our work with you, we will be asking you to complete an annual assessment of existing reproductive health policies, procedures, and programs in your ‘place’. This is a key step in the quality improvement process. Your team should approach this assessment by thinking about your ‘place’ through the lens of how you defined it within your application. You will want to think about your collective place, meaning “the big picture”. You will also want to think about the broad spectrum of services that can enhance reproductive well-being.
You will have flexibility in deciding how to gather information to complete your assessment; however, it is recommended that one individual from your team be designated as the coordinator to oversee the process and enter responses, once gathered. It will be ideal to engage a diverse group of stakeholders/partners, even beyond your multisectoral team, to get input and gather information to complete your assessment. Some teams may prefer to assign parts of the assessment to specific team members or partners based on their expertise and knowledge.
The assessment is organized into four domains:
- Health Equity
- Policy
- Education and Communication
- Healthcare/Service Delivery
You will be asked to complete a set of questions under each domain. If you are unsure or are not able to obtain enough information to make an informed decision, please respond “no”, “none of these”, “not at all”, or “most/some don’t”. Upon completion of the assessment, responses for each domain will be tallied to provide insight into areas of success and areas that need improvement. This will also serve as the foundation for the development of your team’s Place-Based Action Plan.
Preparation for Completing the Annual Place-Based Assessment
To complete this assessment, Power to Decide recommends that you follow these steps:
- Thoroughly review the assessment questions with your team.
- As a team, develop an expanded partnership list of other stakeholders in your ‘place’ that can assist you in gathering the necessary information to complete the assessment. This could include individuals in men’s health, education, family planning, economic development, child welfare, policy, etc.
- Determine the process for reviewing, assigning, and completing questions in all four assessment domains.
- This assessment can be completed as an entire team or in smaller subgroups that are assigned to specific domains or specific questions. It will likely require input from others outside of your team – those individuals you identified on your expanded partnership list.
- Decide how you will collect the information you need to answer the assessment questions, who you will engage to help, and who will serve as the coordinator that synthesizes the responses for entry into the online assessment tool
- This assessment can be completed as an entire team or in smaller subgroups that are assigned to specific domains or specific questions. It will likely require input from others outside of your team – those individuals you identified on your expanded partnership list.
- Review and complete the assessment.
- Tips for completion:
- For some questions there are checklists, and you will be asked to select all that apply. If none of the checklist items apply to your ‘place’, please answer “none of these”.
- For any item that you are not able to answer with a definite “yes” – a “no” answer should be selected.
- For questions that contain a checklist – please select only those items that apply.
- For any question that mentions “reproductive healthcare or family formation”, we would like you to think of this as services, providers, or care that address a broad spectrum of reproductive health needs from contraception, abortion, preconception care, interconception care, prenatal care, postnatal care, fertility and assisted reproduction (e.g., surrogacy), foster care, and adoption services.
- For any question that mentions “social service” providers or programs, we would like you to think about those services outside of healthcare that seek to improve the well-being of individuals, families, and communities such as child welfare and other human services (e.g., housing, food subsidy programs, substance use treatment, etc.).
- For some questions there are checklists, and you will be asked to select all that apply. If none of the checklist items apply to your ‘place’, please answer “none of these”.
- Please answer each question as accurately and as honestly as possible. The annual assessment is your assessment tool for identifying place-based strengths and assets; current gaps and challenges within your community; opportunities; future challenges and concerns; and a plan for action.
- Tips for completion:
Please Remember . . .
- This is a place-based assessment tool and is not meant to be used for evaluating one particular organization or service provider. Think about the questions from the broad perspective (big-picture) of how you defined ‘place’ in your application and the community, city, and/or state in which your ‘place’ resides.
- Expect to have some domains where you may have all action items not meet best practice recommendations. This is totally okay! We understand this assessment may not directly align with the specific, applied work of your team. Through this assessment process, however, you will gain a deeper understanding of broad areas (or primary levers) for making local change to improve reproductive well-being.
- Involve as diverse a group of community members as possible—each person brings insight and perspective that increases the accuracy and quality of your assessment.
- We are here to help if you have questions or need clarification on any of the assessment items. Please use us as a resource and do not wait to review the questions.