Overview

In embarking our Healthy waters, Healthy Communities project, we wanted to be sure we were on the right track. Were there many communities grappling with public health issues related to water-based contamination? Was help available to those communities? Was that help effective? Did these communities need our help? Were the tools we were seeking to develop on target with the needs identified by these communities?

In order to answer these questions, we embarked on a nation-wide needs assessment. The needs assessment was a detailed survey that sought answers to these and many other questions pertinent to our project. We designed our needs assessment late in 2001 and began surveying by the beginning of 2002.