Assess your community's needs

In order to understand the needs of your local population, you should firstly carry out a local needs assessment. This may have already been carried out by public health in your locality; if so, it would be great if you review this using the tools available in the How to Assess Structured Diabetes Education toolkit to pull out the important elements you will need to consider.

If one hasn’t been completed, use the Health Needs Assessment: A Practical Guide from NICE to carry out your local needs assessment. This article by John Wright describes why a health needs assessment for your geographical area is important.

The findings from your local needs assessment will help you to formulate the service that will best serve your local population. This will help you when considering how to tailor your programme.