What is Community Readiness and What are its Contributions to Brazil?

Abstract

Community is the space where residents experience culture and share common interests within a geographically defined area. Community interventions are subject to the influence of numerous local contextual variables. For this reason, there is a need to identify the elements that demonstrate the community's readiness to address and act upon specific demands. This set of elements constitutes "community readiness." This article seeks to elucidate the concept of community readiness and explore its contributions to the Brazilian context. It is configured as a theoretical-conceptual article on community readiness, through a narrative review of the international literature on the subject. The results allowed for a definition of community readiness, description of the history, instruments, application contexts, target audience, and assessment results regarding community readiness. The challenges of assessing community readiness were also explored. It is concluded that to increase the chances of success, interventions introduced in a community must be consistent with the stage of readiness for change, as well as with the knowledge and perception that something is a demand that can be modified. Community readiness is considered to be particularly potent for the Brazilian reality, given that it is a country of vast cultural diversity where public interventions are implemented daily in community territories.