Around the world, there are many programs and interventions developed to improve conditions in local communities. Understanding community needs is crucial to being able to work in it and address those needs. When we want to address health or community issues in the community, we need detailed information about the needs of individuals and the organizations that serve them, as well as the resources that community has available to address those needs. Each community has its own unique set of resources and capacities. According to NACCHO governmental public health system in the U.S. is made up of 51 state (including the District of Columbia), 2794 local, and 565 federally recognized American Indian and Alaska Native tribal public health agencies …show more content…
They conducted a network analysis study in rural communities in two areas (adolescent health and senior health). According their results there were a connection between the network structure and health status outcomes. There is also certain evidence suggesting that public health expenditures and per capita funding is positively associated with performance. The result of national studies17,20,25,28 of examining capacity and performance of local health departments, shows that small and rural health departments were often found to provide fewer Essential Public Health Services (EPHS) or other public health services. The NACCHO profıle surveys demonstrated that the majority of local health departments serving smaller populations (50,000) face unique challenges. While these agencies serve a relatively small population, their service area is often large geographically and with isolated communities. While the need for and the importance of public health practice in rural areas is clear, scarcity of resources and a weak infrastructure hinder the accessibility of public health services to all rural communities. Small and rural health departments face a number of crucial challenges in accessing federal resources for local prevention work, including inadequate funding to distribute evenly across localities to support comprehensive services, lack of infrastructure to compete for grants, and geographic isolation, which leads to increases on costs for promotion and participation in programs. 18,31,77 However, studies37,47,48,50,70 conducted within single states or across a limited number of states found variability in capacity and performance across jurisdictions when controlling for population of jurisdiction