The Association for Community Health Improvement (ACHI) Community Health Assessment Toolkit is a guide for planning, leading, and using community health assessments to better understand--and ultimately improve--the health of communities. It provides insight to the assessment process drawn from experienced professionals and a variety of proven tools.

The ACHI Community Health Assessment Toolkit presents a typical assessment process from beginning to end in six core steps, discusses factors that will make your assessment unique, and addresses potential obstacles and solutions.
The Toolkit contains:

• Detailed steps for a typical health assessment process, including but not limited to data collection 
• Step Summaries with task checklists, budget and timeline guides, and lists of the skills needed for an effective assessment
• Resource Links to additional guides, tools, and templates at every step
• Answers to frequently asked questions about assessments

The ACHI Community Health Assessment Toolkit can help you:

• Complete a thorough review of your community’s health status and unmet needs
• Collect valuable information to help target your community benefit programs
• Complete the new IRS Form 990 Schedule H (which asks about community health needs)
• Create or strengthen partnerships with community organizations that can share in the effort to improve your local population’s health

This toolkit will help you to build upon the connection to your community and examine new ways of meeting the challenges of keeping people healthy and providing care in the 21st century. Immediate, this toolkit will help hospitals and health systems collect and provide the information required by the new Schedule H in Form 990.

Access the Toolkit

The Toolkit is accessible to members of AHA, ACHI, and the Society for Healthcare Strategy and Market Development only. To access the Community Health Assessment Toolkit, please go to www.assesstoolkit.org. Use your SHSMD members-only login and password to access the Toolkit by clicking "Member Log-in" in the upper right corner of this page.

SHSMD members are invited to write to shsmd@aha.org or call 312.422.3888 for log-in assistance or membership information.