A small city in the state of Missouri needed assistance to determine the current and future needs of their community. The city had recently been accepted into the American Association of Retired Persons World Health Organization’s (AARP/WHO) Global Network of Age-Friendly Cities and Communities, and to honor its commitment to the goals of the network, sought out the assistance of The Kelley Group (TKG) to conduct a community needs assessment to serve as the foundation for a plan of action.
TKG, with the assistance of community leaders, developed a needs assessment survey that allowed policymakers to identify the specific needs of citizens and plan for the future demands of the community. Administered via telephone to a probability sample of city residents, representative of the population as a whole, the results of the survey provided a reliable measure of the public’s opinions.
To be effective, the needs assessment survey needed to communicate the current and future needs of residents to those in leadership.
The successful completion and dissemination of the survey findings helped to achieve this goal. The insights gleaned from the needs assessment survey have enabled this small, but thriving, city to plan for the future and remain one of only two communities in the state of Missouri that is an official member of the AARP Network of Age-Friendly States and Communities.