Assessment, Planning, & Communications

San Juan Basin Public Health collects health data and input from community members and stakeholders to create a Community Health Assessment for Archuleta and La Plata counties. SJBPH completes a comprehensive Community Health Assessment at a minimum every five years. The assessment includes primary and secondary data, quantitative and qualitative data, perspectives from a wide range of community partners and stakeholders, and ensures a wide variety of measurements are used to complete a comprehensive Community Health Assessment. The Community Health Assessment informs a comprehensive Public Health Improvement Plan, a five-year plan driven by priorities identified by the community.

Assessment duties also include:

• Program evaluation
• Ongoing data collection within SJBPH and community as a whole
• Participation in integrated state, local, and national surveillance system(s) that quantify public health and environmental problems and threats

In determining community health problems, priority populations, and potential threats to the public's health, SJBPH plans what strategies are needed to engage partners and improve health for all. SJBPH provides and uses results of health data analyses to develop recommendations regarding public health policy, processes, programs or interventions. Staff also translate data, analyses, technical descriptions, and scientific literature into information that is valid, accurate, understandable, and meaningful for intended audiences. 

Central duties include:

• Provide a baseline by which to monitor change
• Identify emerging issues
• Help the community set health priorities and focus resources
• Provide facts upon which to base programmatic or organizational decisions
• Help partners to plan effective, collaborative interventions
• Increase the ability to secure new funding
• Support advocacy for policy changes
• Grant writing and research
• Participate and lead Health Equity and Social Determinants of Health activities

SJBPH's Communications division is responsible for disseminating the public health information that is important to the well-being of residents and visitors, as well as telling the stories of our programs and the lives they touch. The program is also responsible for updating the public and key stakeholders of the results of the Community Health Assessment and local Public Health Improvement Plan so as to inform community policies and ensure health for all.

The most recent information from our many programs can be found on social media, our Newsfeed and in our monthly newsletter.