Conducting a Community-Level Needs Assessment Through Dynamic Engagement With Stakeholders.

This paper presents the process of conducting a community-wide needs assessment that initially focused on soliciting information about childcare needs of families with school-aged children. The researchers were interested in understanding whether the method designed to conduct the needs assessment helped to foster collaboration, trust, and increased participation amongst multiple levels of stakeholders and subcommunities. Utilizing community-based participatory research principles, the authors will present a 3-phase approach to gaining community support through multiple levels of stakeholder engagement.