Mental Health and Wellbeing Needs Assessment

Health need assessment (HNA) is a systematic method for reviewing the health issues facing a population, leading to a set of agreed priorities and resource allocation that will improve health and reduce health inequalities. Strategic in approach, HNA identify areas for development and attention, resulting in needs based recommendations which are used to plan and commission services, develop policy and to help establish future priorities. HNA involves the active identification of need rather than a passive response to demand. Need implies the capacity to benefit from an intervention and can be divided into three types: