The Planned Approach to Community Health (PATCH) program was designed by the Centers for Disease Control as a tool to help communities plan, implement, and evaluate health promotion and health education programs. PATCH consists of three components: community mobilization, community diagnosis, and community intervention. The implementation of PATCH's community diagnosis in Davison County, Ohio (a pseudonym), was examined to identify the extent to which it incorporates those needs assessment principles that are essential for mobilization and widespread reflection and behavior change. The following PATCH activities were among those identified as effective strategies for assessing needs while simultaneously mobilizing support for change: (1) focusing initial mobilization efforts on the community at large rather than on a hand-picked core group; (2) emphasizing community control of the process; (3) fostering a sense of community ownership of the research process; (4) defining "health" broadly enough to include a wide range of citizen concerns; and (5) presenting the needs assessment findings and conducting the subsequent decision making process in a manner encouraging democratic group decision making. Appended are the following: PATCH program summary, mortality data samples, community opinion leader survey questionnaire and responses, and behavioral risk factor data collection instrument. (Contains 25 references.) (MN)