Book excerpt: Needs and Capacity Assessment Strategies for Health Education and Health Promotion, Fourth Edition provides practitioners with a handbook that can be used in the classroom and in the field. It focuses on realistic needs and capacity assessment strategies with considerations for preparation, implementation, and incorporation of findings into the planning process. It also provides an overview of settings, specific target audiences, approaches to assessing needs, and recommendations for addressing problems encountered along the way. The Fourth Edition continues to be reader friendly and worthwhile in terms of practical recommendations. The twelve chapters are realistic process discussions with mini-examples at the end based on the authors’ experiences and those of others in the field. Case studies provide insight into various combinations of strategies used in a variety of settings. Two special articles at the end of the book provide further insight regarding community risk estimation and the use of metaphors to gain a better understanding of the perceived needs and capacities that are assessed.