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What is a Health Risk Assessment?


A health risk assessment (HRA), sometimes known as a health risk appraisal or health assessment, is a questionnaire that evaluates lifestyle factors and health risks of an individual.


There are many types of HRAs, and they can be used for different purposes. For example, many population health and wellness professionals use comprehensive HRAs that cover all dimensions of a person's total well-being, including nutrition, fitness, stress, sleep, mental health, and biometric information such as blood pressure and cholesterol. Healthcare marketing professionals use targeted, condition-specific HRAs as part of their larger marketing and patient engagement strategies.


In both use cases, a typical HRA includes:

  • 1.  Question section
  • 2.  Risk score
  • 3.  Report with individualized feedback on areas of improvement

Health Assessments For Patient Engagement


Health assessments can include condition-specific questionnaires, symptom checkers, and eligibility checkers that help prospective patients self-identify their need for care. These assessments are shorter than a comprehensive HRA used in population health and wellness programs, and typically focus on one condition or health concern.


Healthcare marketers and patient navigators use health assessments to identify prospective patients, engage with them to seek medical care, and ultimately schedule patient encounters.


Jump ahead to learn more about condition-specific health assessments that drive service-line revenue.



Patient Engagement

Background of a Health Risk Assessment


The origin of the HRA can be traced all the way back to the late 1940s when Dr. Lewis C. Robbins (link opens as PDF) began to document patients' health hazards in an effort to not only treat disease but also prevent it. For the next 20 years, the idea of a health hazard chart for physicians' use progressed to a complete HRA including a patient questionnaire, health risk computation, and feedback strategies.


In 1979 Wellsource's very own Dr. Don Hall created the first U.S.-based computerized health risk appraisal.


The following year the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (link opens as a PDF) released publicly available HRA software that included a self-administered survey to calculate adult health risk. This led to the widespread use of health assessments in the workplace.