The Community Readiness Model was developed at the Tri-Ethnic Center to assess how ready a community is to address an issue. The basic premise is that matching an intervention to a community’s level of readiness is absolutely essential for success. Efforts that are too ambitious are likely to fail because community members will not be ready or able to respond. To maximize chances for success, the Community Readiness Model offers tools to measure readiness and to develop stage-appropriate strategies.

The Community Readiness Model has been used to assess readiness for a variety of issues, including drug and alcohol use, domestic and sexual violence, head injury, HIV/AIDS, suicide, animal control issues, and environmental issues. Communities have found it helpful because:

• It is an inexpensive and easy-to-use tool.
• It encourages the use of local experts and resources.
• It provides both a vocabulary for communicating about readiness and a metric for gauging progress.
• It helps create community-specific and culturally-specific interventions.
• It can identify types of prevention/ intervention efforts that are appropriate.