about the project
The Northwest Arkansas Hometown Health Improvement Project, in 2002, initiated an effort to assess the health care needs of the residents of Northwest Arkansas. The Hometown Health Improvement Project joined in coalition with the Hometown Health Organizations in Benton , Carroll, and Madison Counties , in order to conduct the Four County Health Needs Assessment.
- Benton County Community Coalition (BCCC)
- Carroll County Resource Council (CCRC)
- Madison County Health Coalition (MCHC)
- Washington County , Northwest Arkansas Hometown Health Improvement Project (NWAHHIP)
The primary goal of the coalition's project was to provide a comprehensive health needs assessment of Northwest Arkansas from the perspective of the area's citizens. This assessment would function to identify specific health care trends, discern perceived inadequacies in the current health care delivery system and to report the findings of this assessment in the form of a community health report.
The Health Data Committee and the Four County Health Needs Assessment provided overall leadership and planning for this project. The Committee's aim was to gather current health information to better identify the rapidly changing health care needs of the four county region. The health data committee determined that an updated comprehensive health needs assessment was needed, since the last health needs assessment was conducted in 1996. The then-existing health data further needed to be updated due to the dramatic increase in population experienced in the region during the past 10 years.
Northwest Arkansas is confronted with many of the challenges typically associated with rapidly growing communities. Formerly discrete communities are now melding together. The region is currently shifting from a rural to an urban environment. There is a demand for increased services for the growing population base. Cultural and language considerations associated with multicultural immigration present new challenges. To compound these problems, the existing health care delivery system infrastructure is becoming increasingly stressed. The coalition therefore aimed to utilize information obtained from the health needs assessment to improve the current health and well being of the residents of Northwest Arkansas.
The Four County Health Coalition successfully secured funding for this project from the CommunityCare Foundation in order to pursue the goals which served as the impetus for the Health Needs Assessment. The Social Work Research Center (SWRC) of the University of Arkansas was awarded a subcontract for this project in order to develop the health needs assessment survey, to provide the statistical analysis resulting from the data collection and to produce the final report for the project.