Introduction to Community Diagnosis

A community is a cluster of people with at least one common characteristic (geographic location, occupation, ethnicity, housing condition, etc.). A group of people with a common characteristic or interest living together within a larger society comprises a community.

Definitions of Community Diagnosis:

• Community diagnosis is a comprehensive assessment of health status of the community in relation to its social, physical and biological environment. The purpose of community diagnosis is to define existing problems, determine available resources and set priorities for planning, implementing and evaluating health action, by and for the community.
• Community diagnosis generally refers to the identification and quantification of health problems in a community as a whole in terms of mortality and morbidity rates and ratios, and identification of their correlates for the purpose of defining those at risk or those in need of health care.
• “A means of examining aggregate and social statistics in addition to the knowledge of the local situation, in order to determine the health needs of the community”

Importance of Community Diagnosis

• It helps to find the common problems or diseases, which are troublesome to the people and are easily preventable in the community.
• Community diagnosis can be a pioneer step for betterment of rural community health.
• It is a tool to disclose the hidden problems that are not visible to the community people but are being affected by them.
• It helps to access the group of underprivileged people who are unable to use the available facilities due to poverty, prevailing discriminations or other reasons.
• It helps to find the real problems of the community people which might not have perceived by them as problems.
• It helps to impart knowledge and attitudes to turnover people’s problems towards the light of solution.

Community Analysis:

Community analysis is the process of examining data to define needs strengths, barriers, opportunities, readiness, and resources. The product of analysis is the “community profile”.

Community Diagnosis is done using a tool called "Health Indicators" which are the variables used for the assessment of community health. Indicators must be valid, reliable, sensitive, specific, feasible and relevant.


Health indicators can be classified as:

1. Mortality indicators
2. Morbidity indicators
3. Disability rates
4. Nutritional status indicators
5. Health care delivery indicators
6. Utilization rates
7. Indicators of social and mental health
8. Environmental indicators
9. Socio-economic indicators
10. Health policy indicators
11. Indicators of quality of life
12. Other indicators

Posted in: Community Diagnosis,Health education