If your coalition has already formed a community needs assessment work group, or a strategic planning work group, community readiness assessment efforts can be incorporated into the work group’s responsibilities. If neither of these work groups has been formed, create a readiness assessment work group that will contribute to the strategic planning process.

There are many health and wellness areas that can be assessed as part of community readiness. Identify your coalition’s specific areas of interest to inform your community assessment planning. Also use the goals and objectives you have laid out in your strategic plan to identify the areas of community readiness that need to be assessed.

For example, your community has a goal to reduce youth suicide attempts with objectives to reach youth from rural and Indigenous populations. Your first step is to assess the community readiness in these two specific populations and the organizations supporting them, such as schools. Use these focus areas to guide your choice of community readiness methods, participants in the community readiness assessments, and how the results are shared.

Just as you can use multiple data collection methods to inform your understanding of suicide in your community, you can use multiple data collection methods for assessing community readiness. (To learn more about different kinds of data collection methods, visit Data Key Area 3: Using Data to Assess Progress and Make Changes.)

Pay close attention to the methods that are most appropriate for assessing the readiness of your participants. For example, it may be appropriate to hold individual interviews with teachers, but you may need to conduct surveys with students.

Regardless of whether or not you use a formal community readiness assessment tool, you will need to either create or adapt at least some assessment questions. For examples of community readiness assessment questions, see the Community Tool Box: Community Readiness.

As you identify what questions to ask, focus on developing ones that will help you understand your community representatives’ awareness, level of priority, and capacity related to suicide. For example, if you are seeking to understand rural communities’ readiness to prevent youth suicide, you might put together the following series of open-ended questions to discuss with school staff, students, and parents:

• What have you seen or heard about the issue of youth suicide in the community? (Measures awareness)
• Describe how pressing you believe addressing youth suicide is in the community and why. (Measures level of priority)
• What resources, staff time, or money would your organization be willing to invest in supporting youth suicide prevention? (Measures capacity)

After community representatives answer these three questions, you will know more about the overall community readiness to take action to prevent suicide, and any differences in readiness between settings, organizations, regions, and demographic groups.

As you develop questions, be sure to consider how appropriate they are for different assessment participants, including the age, ability, and roles of the different community members. Some questions may need to be adapted for different groups. In the example above, a coalition probably would not want to ask students what resources and money they can contribute to suicide prevention. But they could ask students whether they would be interested in participating in a youth behavioral health advisory board.

Keep in mind that it can be emotionally difficult for community members to describe how they see the issue of suicide and how important they believe it is. Be mindful of how you phrase and ask your questions. As people participate in the readiness assessment, provide them with access to mental health services or information on how to find support, such as the 988 Suicide & Crisis Line.

Be sure to train your work group members in how to use any formal or locally developed assessment tools and questions before they use them. This training will ensure consistent information gathering across community settings and demographics.

Use your formal assessment tools or locally developed assessment questions and methods to assess your community readiness. As you conduct your assessments, monitor whether you are gathering the information you need or if adjustments need to be made to your assessment questions and methods.

Analyze the data to identify your community’s readiness for engaging in suicide prevention efforts. Most formal community readiness tools provide specific directions on how to measure levels of readiness, so use their guidance.

However, if you are not using a formal tool, focus on what you have learned about the community’s awareness, priorities, and capacity to measure readiness. If the community is low in all three areas, it would be at a “low level of community readiness.” If the community has high awareness but is not prioritizing suicide prevention or lacks capacity, it would be at a “medium level of readiness.” If your community shows high awareness; is willing to prioritize suicide prevention; and has the resources, time, and money to invest, it would be at a “high level of readiness.” More detailed descriptions of community readiness levels and associated activities that can be used to address them are included in Table 1 under Step 7.

After you have identified your community’s level of readiness, use the information to guide decisions related to the following questions:

• What goals and objectives are realistic in your strategic plan?
• What prevention approaches are likely to gather community support?
• What action steps may need to be taken before implementing desired prevention approaches?

For example, if readiness results show a low level of awareness in the community on youth suicide, you may want to set additional goals to increase awareness. If, on the other hand, you see strong awareness but a lack of key community partner willingness to contribute to suicide prevention in youth, you may need to draft an action step in your strategic plan on developing strong partnerships before the rollout of prevention strategies. Visit the Planning element to learn more.

In Table 1, we have provided possible activities you can use to address different levels of community readiness. The related Stages of Readiness are drawn from the Community Tool Box: Community Readiness.

Table 1. Activities for Different Levels of Readiness

Visit the Community Tool Box for more detailed descriptions of community readiness levels and a variety of strategies and considerations to help communities progress through different stages of readiness.