The executive summary of a needs assessment summarizes the longer actual needs assessment report.  It is a shorter version allowing readers to become more quickly informed about the topic at hand.  For this assignment, rather than writing a full-scale needs assessment for your health issue and target population, you will prepare an executive summary.  

Your executive summary is to be based on the primary and secondary data you have collected thus far on your health issue and target population in your chosen geographic region.  That is, your key informant interview will serve as your primary data, while the statistics and other information from the scholarly literature you collected for your annotated bibliography will serve as your secondary data.  This data must be synthesized together to inform the sections of your executive summary.

To give you guidance on how these summaries can be prepared, I have attached three examples of executive summaries of health-based needs assessments.  They are all different.  Please browse through them to get a sense of what you might want to include in this assignment.  You have some flexibility with how you present your information, but you do need meet the following guidelines:

Requirements:

•  Content must be 3-4 pages in length (this length requirement does not include the cover or references pages)

•  Begin with APA-style cover page

•  End with APA-style references page (remember to cite all sources in APA-style within the body of your executive summary!)

•  Content sections, at a minimum, must include:

•   Introduction
•    Community profile (i.e. the geographic region you are focusing on) – including overall priority health need. In addition, status of your specific chosen health issue among your chosen target population (e.g. determinants, severity, social factors, recent history, etc.)
•    Community programs/organizations addressing this issue (successes, challenges, what they are doing, etc.)
•    Conclusions (be sure your conclusion’s language clearly justifies a need for a health program aimed at your health issue among your target population)