Community Assessment: Lake City

This paper will conduct a community assessment of Marion County, Indiana. Marion County is located in the heart of Indianapolis, which is the capital of the state of Indiana. Marion County was created April 1, 1822 and was formed from Delaware New Purchase. It was named after General Frances Marion from South Carolina in the Revolutionary War period. This assessment will address the health needs and risks of Marion County through the use of the WGU assessment forms identifying the population’s economic status, neighborhood and community safety inventory, cultural assessment, and the disaster assessment and planning guide.

The City of Bend, Oregon Government consists of approximately 500 employees across thirteen different divisions. These divisions are Police, Fire, Community Development, Public Works, etc and are all coordinated under the City Manager’s office. Bend’s government style is called a “weak mayor” form of city government, in that the citizens elect a city council, which then elects a mayor from among the council members. The city council and mayor, then hire a City Manager to run the day to day operations of the city. In doing this form of government, the City Manager is not directly accountable to the citizens and can focus on the needs of the city and its employees. At the same time, the City Council can only provide direction to the city manager and is accountable to the citizens. The city employees in this case are led by the city manager as directed by city council. The community leadership environment in this case is established by council to provide direction to the city manager.

Another strategy would involve utilizing data from existing public sources to assess the health and safety needs of the people of Utah County. The main elements of the collected data would involve the identification of the key health indicators and the corresponding risk factors. I would also collect information related to the impact of the social, economic and the environment on the health status of Utah inhabitants. The key sources of data for the assessment of needs of Utah populations would include US census bureau, healthy people 2020, environment public health tracking program, department of mental health and substance abuse and Utah hospital discharge database. Other sources of information for the need assessment would include the indicator based information system indicator for the public health department and Utah’s healthcare access survey (Niederdeppe, Bu, Borah, Kindig & Robert, 2008). I

A community’s health can be established through a myriad of differing factors. Three specific factors that will help to determine the health of the county in which I live are community safety, disaster preparedness, as well as an analysis of the population. The community under review, Merced, is located in central California and made up of seventeen cities and communities whose individual populations do not exceed more than 75,000 and covers an area of approximately 1,972 square miles (United States Census Bureau, 2010) with a total population of approximately 255,793 people in 2010 (Merced County California, 2012).

New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. (2006). Community Health Profiles: South Shore Staten Island. Retrieved from http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/downloads/pdf/data/2006chp-504.pdf

I have been working as a registered nurse in Tacoma, WA since 2011 and I have chosen to assess the community health of Pierce County. Tacoma is the county seat of Pierce County and the largest city in the county and third largest city in the state (US Census Bureau, 2014). Pierce County is located south of Seattle and is comprised of 1,679 sq. miles, many of which front the Puget Sound. Northern areas of the county are comprised of islands and peninsulas only accessible by bridges or boats. It also contains one of the nation’s national parks and the state’s tallest peak, Mount Rainier. The Park’s boundaries largely define the eastern border of the County and

Every Community faces a variety of community health problems. The health of a community relies on four factors: physical, social and culture, community organization and individual behaviors. I believe my hometown struggles most with individual behavior, specifically poor and unhealthy lifestyle decisions. How individual community members behave reflects back onto the community as a whole. Unhealthy lifestyle decisions can have a lifetime affect on the individual as well as the community.

While it is difficult to pinpoint the exact health problems facing my town, reckless driving and accidents can certainly top the list. About a year ago, a woman in my town struck two Cliffside Park Special Police Officers. While one of the officers was released from the hospital after being treated the other officer, Stephen Petruzzello, sadly passed away due to the accident. “Police have cited the driver of an SUV that struck two Cliffside Park Special Police Officers with failure to yield to a pedestrian, failure to wear a seat belt, careless driving and reckless driving, authorities said.” (Myles Ma 2014) The woman stated that the two men were not wearing their reflector vests at the time, which is a huge health and safety concern.

Community assessment, a key process in community health nursing, aims to evaluate the needs, resources, and challenges of a given community. The information gathered from the assessment is crucial to formulating health promotion objectives and activities that are geared to improve the general public’s health (Nies & McEwen, 2015). To complete this community assessment, I utilized methodological approaches to collect quantitative and qualitative data, which include several interviews from key informants, a windshield survey, and a review of published reports and census data. Thus, this paper intends to present a comprehensive profile of my community, identify perceived and actual threats, and recognize relevant health improvement opportunities for my neighborhood.

* The ancestral lineage of the city is the Pennsylvania Dutch, who was descendants of Germany (City of Sandy Lake website, 2012).

The idea behind the community needs assessment for the town of Wallingford, Connecticut was to critique the overall nutritional needs and health of the community. While preparing a community needs assessment, some factors to consider are: government, programs both profit and non-profit, demographics, and the economy of the community.

Scottsdale, Arizona was incorporated in 1951 and is the sixth largest city in Arizona (City of Scottsdale, 2013). Scottsdale is 184.2 square miles located in the picturesque Sonoran Desert nestled just east of Phoenix, north of the Salt River Pima Indian Community, and west of the McDowell Mountains. The city’s official slogan is “The West’s Most Western Town.” The city is a prime area for new urban growth

I look at myself as an optimist. I have worked with various levels of learner and I believe that all students have a chance to succeed and achieve, which, is made possible with just a little help, persistence and teaching. I also have strong leadership and collaboration skills. I credit these skills to me playing on multiple sports teams and for participating in a college sport. It has taught me persistence and how to work with others to reach a common goal. I am a leader from it because you have people that are relying on you to take charge, guide them and be accountable.

To utilize this concept, Durham, North Carolina had successfully linked health system and social and environmental data via shared geography to provide a multidimensional understanding of individual and community health. And aimed to improve health care, improve overall health of the population and reduce per capita costs of health. By pooling census data, tax payments and lead concentrations

The overall health of communities consists of a multitude of factors. It is important to understand that no community is alike; the challenges faced by a community are unique to that specific population. In order to uncover specific health needs of our selected community, we conducted a familiarization community assessment, or windshield survey. Upon analysis of our comprehensive assessment data, we concluded that a primary health concern for this community resides within the relatively large elderly population, which is increased risk for hypertension and cardiac disease.