Qualitative Health Needs Assessment of a Former Mining Community (Professional) (Report‪)‬

Undertaking a health needs assessment (HNA) has been identified as a systematic way of examining the health issues facing a population, it has the potential to direct the focus of priority setting and the allocation of resources in order to improve health and reduce inequalities. (1) Health is a complex, dynamic concept involving every aspect of human life, psychological, social, spiritual as well as physical, (2) and in order to undertake a comprehensive analysis of the health needs of an area information must be collected from a variety of sources and often in a number of ways. A previous quantitative HNA (3) indicated that residents of one former mining village in Kent were dissatisfied with the health services offered. This paper reports on a qualitative HNA undertaken by a team of investigators from Canterbury Christ Church University. It was commissioned by the primary care trust (PCT) to elicit and document the detailed expressed health needs of residents in order to provide appropriate primary health care services.