An Innovative Model for Conducting a Participatory Community Health Assessment

Understanding a community's perceived health care needs is essential to the promotion of community health. The purpose of this article is to review various methodologies used to as sess community health care needs, and then provide a case example of a transcultural explo ration of perceived health care needs of the residents of Utila, Honduras. This study presents a template for using unique assessment tools to empower communities to identify their health care needs. Implications for future transculutural community nursing studies are dis cussed.