ABSTRACT
This chapter examines assessment tools that might be used in population-based needs assessments for the purposes of high-risk screening in clinical practice and practice-based research. In an era of limited financial resources and in the context of the overall social climate, selecting a target population and a family-focused health promotion or health care intervention requires assessment frameworks that help to prioritize alternative strategies. Moos and colleagues have recently developed frameworks and tools to assess the characteristics and impact of community-based and hospital-based treatment settings. The chapter reviews only instruments that, to some extent, have been developed for the purposes of assessing relationships between families and health or illness. Tools to assess the impact of general psychological distress on social adjustment are used, however, only recently have efforts been made to tailor assessment to the impact of physical illness. In contrast, an ecosystemic assessment of individual family functioning and of the needs of an individual family is a complex clinical task.
