This document is the final report on an action-oriented community diagnosis (AOCD) of Siler City, North Carolina. The AOCD was conducted by a team of five graduate students from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill School of Public Health between October of 2003 and May of 2004. The assessment was aimed at identifying the strengths and needs of the Siler City community according to service providers and community members. To better understand Siler City, our team first examined secondary data about Siler City’s history, demographics, economics, education, and health outcomes. After being approved by the School of Public Health’s Institutional Review Board (IRB), we conducted qualitative, key informant interviews with service providers and community members to listen to assets and concerns important to them. Because several assessments have been conducted in Siler City in recent years, we asked interviewees about their general concerns and then asked about issues that had been identified as salient in previous years to learn about how these issues had changed since the previous assessments. In total, we conducted 14 service provider interviews and 15 community member interviews. After analyzing secondary and primary data, our team organized the results into themes. Identified themes included lack of affordable and well-maintained housing, prevalence of crime, lack of good jobs, lack of recreation, lack of transportation, improving relationships between different community groups, lack of access to health care, emerging health concerns, and the controversial role of research in the community. Service providers and community members held similar views on most of these issues. Once themes were identified, we held a Community Forum on April 26, 2004, to present the findings to the service providers and community members of Siler City. The forum was well-attended by community members and service providers of Siler City and focused on discussion of priority issues and development of action steps. It is our hope that this document will be of use to those concerned about the health and quality of life of people living in Siler City.Master of Public Healt
