Developing Partnerships to Examine Community Strengths, Challenges, and Needs in Nigeria: A Pilot Project

Abstract

There has been increased attention internationally on whole-person health and on building health resilience. A community project developed and coordinated an international effort in Nigeria using the web-based application MyStrengths+MyHealth (MSMH) to promote understanding of strengths (resilience), challenges, and needs as part of a health and well-being initiative, providing the opportunity to develop sustainable community partnerships informed by data. Community partners partnered to pilot the use of MSMH to gather self-reported data on strengths, challenges, and needs in the community setting. Participants were sent a WhatsApp link to MSMH; data was analyzed using descriptive statistics. Further research is needed to validate results in a larger population. This community project presents a new phase of individual and community-level data to understand hidden needs of the most vulnerable members of communities. This research has the potential to shift the paradigm to optimize population health management using a strengths (resilience) perspective.

Keywords

• Community health
• Whole-person health
• Resilience
• Community-driven data