A key function of public health nurses is to conduct community health assessments, in this assignment you will use Riverview in Florida as the are or community. In some agencies, often the public health department, a variety of people conduct the assessment alone or in combination. The point of the assessment is to help identify health needs and determine ways to address those needs. Review chapter 17 in Stanhope and Lancaster (2020) to understand the essential parts of a community assessment as well as how and where to gather data and other types of information. As you do this assessment, think like a community health nurse, not like a student. You will overthink the assignment if you think like a student and miss important, obvious points. If you think like a nurse doing an assessment (something most of you do all the time) the assessment and analysis will flow and make more sense. You will observe more and have better insights with less struggle. Review the Community Assessment/Analysis Part 1 form/template provided in the Forms folder as a downloadable Microsoft Word document (and as an attachment below). You are required to use this document, download it, complete it, and submit the completed Word document to this drop box.
You can begin the assessment in several ways. Some like to start with gathering data – statistics, reviewing web sites. At some point, usually early in the process a windshield survey is conducted. A windshield survey is driving around the community in your car and observing the community from the car (hence – windshield survey). It is best to have someone go with you and drive, so you can look around and take notes. You are looking for safety and health issues – both strengths and areas of concern. You want to drive around as much of the town as possible to get a feel for the different areas. For example, in Chicago there are many ethnic areas noted for their unique foods, art, festivals throughout the city. It is important to note these type of areas. Also, observe for safe streets, lighting, sidewalks, public transportation, etc. Accessibility to necessary services like stores, banks, schools. You may also want to interview some people for information about the community – maybe some professionals (government officials, police officers, teachers, health care workers, etc.) for information about their area of expertise. Gathering information for the assessment comes from a variety of sources to get a full picture of the community. There are several sections to the assessment. At the end of each section, reflect on the information gathered to identify the strengths and areas for needed improvement related to that section. This analysis of the data will help you identify the problem areas that need to be addressed once the full assessment is completed. If there is an area of the assessment form where you do not find the resource within your community, you will need to go outside of your community to address that area. For example, not every community has an airport for international travel, so you would report what major airport is used by the population in your community. Not every town has an acute care hospital – please identify where the residents would go for acute care. Part of the evaluation of the assessment will be based on the information you observed from your windshield survey, talking with community members, and the quality of the resources used to collect the data (for example, Wikipedia, real estate websites and Epodunk are not reliable resources). Your data needs to be based on the most current available reliable information. If you interview your neighbor, a plumber, for information about the weather – and he says the weather is always rainy from 2-4 in the summer months – that is not a reliable source. But – if you report your neighbor is a meteorologist and he explains the weather typically rains from 2-4 pm during summer months because the humidity is at its highest between those hours – that is a reliable source. The quality of your sources is very important in a community assessment. Part 1 Community document has both parts of the assessment of the Riverview area, please refer to the samples, chapter 17, and any other scholarly resource you would like to use for this assignment. Please put answers on the template.