Utilization of community assessment model for identification of family health problems

One of the most important steps in providing services is to identify and prioritize community health problems. This study was designed and implemented to identify and prioritize problems and, also, to determine the factors related to the problem with the highest level of priority in Divandarh district, Kurdistan province. This study was performed based on the North Carolina’s Community Health Assessment model which includes 8 steps. According to this model, the study was conducted in two phases. First, in steps 1 to 7, qualitative and quantitative methods were used to assess the community and to indentify the existing problems. In the second phase, i.e. in Step 8, a cross-sectional study was designed to determine the size of the major problem and its effective factors. Overall, 10 main problems were found in the first phase. After prioritization, unintended pregnancy was determined as the problem with the highest priority. Based on the results of the next phase, the prevalence of unintended pregnancy was 33%. This study found statistically significant relationships between unintended pregnancy and variables such as education level of spouses, residence, age, number of children, number of previous abortions and spouse's job. Based on the obtained results, intervention programs such as training women and proper counseling are necessary to prevent unintended pregnancies. Also, as part of the health team’ tasks, community assessment should be carried out in the health system with an appropriate methodology.