Incidence of Low Birth Weight Infants in Dougherty County

Discuss disparities related to ethnic and cultural groups relative to low birth weight infants and preterm births. Describe the impact of extremely low birth weight babies on the family and on the community (short-term and long-term, including economic considerations, on-going care considerations, and co-morbidities associated with prematurity). Identify at least one support service within your community for preterm infants and their family. Provide the link for your colleagues to view. Does the service adequately address needs of this population? Explain your answer.

Within the City of Toronto, there is a heavy concentration of social housing, in the form of both houses and buildings, in the space South of St. Clair Avenue, bordered by Jane St. to the West and Woodbine Avenue to the East. Within this space however, rather than being evenly spaced out, social housing developments are clustered within certain neighbourhoods, such as in and around Parkdale and between the neighbourhoods of Moss Park, Regent Park, and the Garden district. Outside of this space, generally speaking, social housing is placed further apart with some exceptional clusters, such as the 18th and (portions of) the 4th community housing units, as well as the Yonge-Eglinton area. In the peripheries of the city, social housing developments are mostly located along major arteries, and there are very few houses, as opposed to buildings.

“Compared with European Americans, African American infants experience disproportionately high rates of low birth weight (LBW) and preterm delivery and are more than twice as likely to die during their 1st year of life”(Giscombé, C. L., & Lobel, M., 2005). The infant mortality rate for African Americans is 13.7 deaths per 1000 live births, more than twice the rate (5.7) for White Americans in the U.S. (Kung, Hoyert, Xu, & Murphy, 2008). A lot of the racial disparity in infant mortality can be explained by low birthweight and preterm delivery, which are also disproportionately and often experienced by African Americans (Martin et al., 2007).

The emergency room has the ability to care for a total of 6 patient’s requiring immediate emergency care, but has the capability to fly patients out to other facilities if required. Dignity Health of Merced is the larger of the two facilities and cares for the majority of the population of Merced County. Dignity Health has a total of 194 beds available. Dignity Health has approximately 10,900 admissions per year and total emergency room visits equaling around 66,000 per year. On a typical weekend the emergency room will see about 250 patients between the hours of 7 a.m. and7 p.m. (M. Parker RN, personal communication, June 8, 2012). Also serving the community are 8 primary clinics. The majority of these clinics are located within the city limits of Merced and Los Banos. Those located outside of these locations will have to drive upto 30 minutes to obtain medical services. Merced County also has five psychiatric facilities, only 2 of which are capable of admitting patients. Country Villa Merced Behavioral Health Center has 96 beds available for the community and has the ability to care for long-term patients between the ages of 18 to 65 years of age (Country Villa Merced Behavioral Health Center, 2012). Marie Green Psychiatric Center is a smaller facility that has the ability to admit upto 20 patients between the ages of 18 to 65 years of age, but this is a short term

some Chicago neighborhoods, three or four families might live in homes originally built for just

In 2000 the housing unit density for all of Mercer County was just over 74 houses per square mile. The city of Sharon has the highest housing density in the entire county with almost 1,997 unites per square mile. Considering this ratio there are more apartments and people renting rather than owning their own homes to save space. The Northern Tier Area has the lowest density with just 22 houses per square mile so there are no apartments just houses (Housing pg. 41-42).

I have seen several home improvement company vehicles around the community suggesting that residents appear to take pride in the appearance of their homes. The area appeared to be a solid middle class community that would be a nice place to raise a family. There is no evidence of abandoned homes and several real estate signs dispersed throughout the community. The island at its lowest point is 160 feet above sea level but is still susceptible to flooding, especially from after Hurricane Sandy. The aftermaths of the hurricane left some homes on the northeastern shoreline damaged and are still under construction for repair.

The housing stock is varied. There are split level homes and ranches that were built in the 60’s and give parts of the town an old world, small town feel. The stately older homes have made way for newer Mediterranean styled and ranch style houses with lots of garden space and tree-lined backyards.

Discuss disparities related to ethnic and cultural groups relative to low birth weight infants and preterm births.

The demographics of McLennan County can be found in Table 1. This information shows the change in the demographics from 2010 to 2014. As can be seen by the chart, there is not a huge amount of growth, but growth nonetheless. Growth and change is expected in this county in the coming years due to new developments in the downtown area including a new stadium, which provide opportunities to live and work closer in to downtown and property values are also on the rise. The county values when compared with the state values are very similar.

Carolina Birth and Wellness is a full-service doula agency that is located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Carolina Birth and Wellness offers doula support, massage therapy, and infant massage classes to families. Their doula services include birth doula, postpartum doula, sibling doula, birth planning consultation, belly casting, belly binding, and operation special delivery. Carolina Birth and Wellness supports all the families in North Carolina, including the LGBT communities.

A mix of housing age, old houses ( 40-100 years old predominant) and new housing developments

Using my previous fieldwork and the Windshield Survey, I was able to drive around the city of Pasadena observing local patrons. I was able to focus my desire for improvements on specific areas I thought would be appropriate and want to focus on specifically for my community health topic. Due to the large amount of people in the city, I was able to go to local parks, outdoor malls and various busy streets. Using questions addressed from the Windshield Survey, I was able to delineate whether the city is primarily rural or suburban. Approximately how much open space is there and whether it is open space or private? Pasadena is a suburban city and has over 7 million square feet of open space (City Data, 2015). The survey also asks how old the buildings and homes are in the community? Are these homes similar or different in structure and architecture? Are there solar panels in use? Are the yards trimmed and neat or overgrown? I used the city 's

Because there has been an increase in the number of apartments being built in the city and many on the roads are struggling. So Rob Stokes came up with the plan of constructing new homes in the south of Campbelltown. There was a continuing construction in the said location and enough lands to hold 35,000 new homes to minimize the obstrcutions in congested cities.

The authors David A. Newburn and Peter Berck looked at how land use regulations differentially influenced suburban versus rural-residential development in exurban areas. Exurban areas are defined as an area that “extends beyond the built-up urban and contiguously developed suburban areas, but not into the true hinterlands beyond the commuting range of the city centers and their edge cities” (Nelson and Sanchez 1997). The journal looks at a county in California that enacted urban growth boundary regulations (UGB) that placed limitations on sewer and water extensions as well as minimum-lot-size restrictions (zoned maximum-residential density). To determine how the restrictions affected the development densities the county was broken up into four zones based on proximity to sewer and water. The individual zones were then divided farther into parcel attributes and proximity to major roads and centers. Newburn and Berck chose the Random Parameter Logit Model (RPL) to arrive at their conclusions.