Executive Summary

This document is the culmination of a community assessment in Snow Camp, North Carolina. The community assessment team was comprised of five graduate students in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education at the UNC School of Public Health in Chapel Hill. The community assessment is a research project that attempts to discover both the strengths and weaknesses and identify future directions of a given community. The goal of the process is to bring community members and service providers together at a community meeting to start a dialog and create change.

The team worked with a preceptor who was both a member of the Snow Camp community and a service provider in Alamance County. The team sought to obtain a variety of opinions and data regarding a range of quality of life issues in Snow Camp. The students achieved this goal primarily through interviews and focus groups with various community members and service providers.

The Snow Camp community assessment team also reviewed secondary data to add to the interviews. Secondary data from the county level was used for much of the analysis. In addition, historical accounts from the Snow Camp community were used to provide information on the history of the area. The team used the data to supplement the information received from primary data collection.

There were forty-five people interviewed during this process. Twenty individual interviews and one focus group were conducted with community members and two focus groups and four individual interviews were conducted with service providers. The Institutional Review Board (IRB) of the University of North Carolina approved all aspects of this project.

There were some limitations in collecting data for this assessment. The team was not able to complete as many interviews as desired due to time constraints. However, the team did succeed in interviewing people of various educational and economic levels, ranging in age and gender, and people from various religious and ethnic and racial backgrounds.

The culmination of the community assessment process was a very successful community meeting at the Sylvan Elementary School on the evening of Tuesday, April 23rd, 2002. At the meeting, the community assessment team presented their findings to the community. The team then asked participants to choose a theme, identified through the assessment process, and work in a small group to pursue action steps to address the community's concerns.

The purpose of this document is to summarize the findings of the Snow Camp Community Assessment. Below is an overview of topics currently important to members of the Snow Camp community and the providers who serve the area. These categories are described in greater detail in the document. The team hopes that this document can serve as a valuable resource and starting point for community members and service providers who seek to continue the dialogue, vision, and civic participation that the community assessment process has helped to stimulate.

Acknowledgements

Themes Identified Through the Snow Camp Community Assessment Process