Health needs assessment and the ecology of care: a research note.

A Health Needs Assessment project was undertaken in 1999 for The Royal New Zealand Plunket Society (Inc.), a voluntary community organisation that provides child and family health promotion to 50,000 new babies each year nationwide. Specially qualified registered nurses, community workers and volunteers deliver the service that includes home visiting as part of universal health care. The aims were to verify and refine criteria for health needs assessment by nurses for the ongoing development of practice. Methods used enabled participatory action by child and family health nurses (Plunket nurses). The context was health promotion for apparently well children and their families as part of the Ministry of Health universal Well-Child Tamariki Ora program. The results included identification of a series of health needs assessment criteria, and direction to further develop practice. As a result of the project, it was possible to incorporate the four major concepts in the 2000 revision of the Plunket Health Record. The challenge for child and family health promotion in New Zealand is to assess health need at a family level with the focus on improving child health outcomes. Nurses who use standard data collection items to assess health needs are also likely to identify subsequent interventions more explicitly. Therefore the main benefit of the project is the potential to improve clinical practice.