6c. Making Maximum Use of Community Capacity: The Art and Science of Asset Mapping  

Needs- vs. Asset-Based Approaches

As is the case with any population health approach, effective community mobilization strategies are informed by data on the health status and other key characteristics of the community in question.

In the past, the information collected to guide community mobilization efforts often focused solely on a community's deficits (i.e., their needs and problems). Working from a "needs" perspective generally led to external funds and services being sought to “help” the community. This, in turn, often resulted in a fragmented patchwork of services, many of which were not appropriate to the culture and dynamics of that particular community and did not contribute to building community capacity or enabling community members to take action on their key health-related concerns. To sum up, "needs-based" assessments of community conditions tended to lead to community dependence rather than community development.¹

To avoid creating community dependency, Kretzmann and McKnight (1993) proposed an alternate approach whereby community change agents focus on identifying and discovering a community's capacities and assets.¹ The asset-based approach does not remove the need for outside resources, but makes effective use of these resources by: 

• starting with what is present in the community;
• concentrating on the agenda-building and problem-solving capacity of the residents;
• stressing local determination, investment, creativity, and control.

John McKnight provides an overview of asset-based community development in this two-part lecture: 

Community assets include:

• Skills, knowledge, talents and experience of local residents
• Community associations, many of which provide benefits far beyond their mandate
• Businesses
• Schools, churches, libraries, and other institutions that operate within the community
• Municipal services such as police, fire, parks, and recreation services
• Other social services and community organizations
• Physical structures; e.g., town square, heritage buildings
• Natural resources; e.g., river, trees, green space¹

Community Asset Maps

The first step in documenting community assets is to work with community members to develop a community asset map. The elements of a sample representative community asset map are depicted in Figure 2. This map identifies the physical, economic, individual, environmental, and social resources that a hypothetical community can mobilize or draw upon to address shared health priorities.

As is the case with systems theory (see Module 4), community asset maps can sometimes be complex, but are nonetheless critical for identifying community strengths that can be mobilized to address complex health issues at the local level.