Feasibility of Describing Wellbeing and Strengths at the Community Level Utilizing the Omaha System

Capturing strengths at the community level offers an emergent perspective to a strength-based approach for population health. The Omaha System standardized terminology has been found feasible to describe individual strengths in patient care planning. This study depicts results of using the Omaha System to capture strengths at the community level. Descriptive statistics and visualization were used to examine patterns of strengths and signs/symptoms by Omaha System Problem concept based on the secondary data analysis from 118 student-generated community assessments. Results suggest that it is feasible to use the Omaha System as a method classifying strengths and problems at the community level. The relationship between strengths and signs/symptoms is consistent with the pattern observed at the individual-level. Utilizing a strength-based model may provide robust information about community strengths leading to new approaches to population health management in support of community wellbeing.