Assessment 2 -Population Health Improvement Plan

Develop a population health improvement plan, based on your evaluation of the best available demographic, environmental, and epidemiological data, that focuses on your diagnosis of a widespread population health issue.

Part of effectively engaging in evidence-based practice is the ability to synthesize raw health data with research studies and other relevant information in the literature. This will enable you to develop sound interventions, initiatives, and outcomes to address health concerns that you find in data during the course of your practice.

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SHOW LESS

In this assessment, you have an opportunity to evaluate community demographic, environmental, and epidemiological data to diagnose a widespread population health issue, which will be the focus of a health improvement plan that you develop.

By successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competencies and assessment criteria:Assessment 2 -Population Health Improvement Plan

Competency 2: Apply evidence-based practice to design interventions to improve population health.

Evaluate community demographic, epidemiological, and environmental data to diagnose widespread population health issues.

Develop an ethical health improvement plan to address a population health issue within a community.

Competency 3: Evaluate outcomes of evidence-based interventions.

Propose criteria for evaluating population health improvement plan outcomes.

Competency 4: Evaluate the value and relative weight of available evidence upon which to make a clinical decision.

Justify the value and relevance of evidence used as the basis of a population health improvement plan.

Competency 5: Synthesize evidence-based practice and academic research to communicate effective solutions.

Develop a strategy for communicating with colleagues and members of the community in an ethical, culturally sensitive, and inclusive way.

Integrate relevant and credible sources of evidence to support assertions, correctly formatting citations and references using APA style.

Evidence-Based Population Health Improvement Plan for Adolescent Overweight and Obesity

In all communities that are unique in their composition (ethnically, culturally, racially, linguistically and so on), an evaluation of their demographic, epidemiological, and environmental data will show specific population health problems. Most of these problems are solvable by basic community health nurse-driven health improvement initiatives that mostly focus on disease prevention and health promotion. This paper is about such a population health improvement plan for adolescent overweight and obesity, identified as the most pressing community population health issue.Assessment 2 -Population Health Improvement Plan

Community Evaluation

The community in question is a marginalized suburban majority Hispanic community which also has a sizeable African American presence. The assessment of the community’s health status was made by analyzing its demographic data, the environment in which the community lives, and its epidemiological data. Demographically, the community was found to be 75% Hispanic, 15% Black, 7% mixed race, and 3% other. It was noted that these different ethnic classes tended to live together by their racial identity in a particular part of the residential suburb. The environment in which they live has streets that are littered with garbage (not very clean) but served by public transport. Few people in the community appear to own cars as the number of personal cars on the streets is quite low. There seems to be no open spaces for recreation such as parks or basketball courts. At night, the streets are poorly lit and scary to walk in alone. Most children are picked and dropped by school buses since few residents own cars. This community assessment was accomplished through a two-day windshield survey. Epidemiologically, available data showed that approximately 1 out of 3 teenagers across the community was suffering from overweight or obesity. Because of this, the community had a disproportionately high number of type II diabetes cases, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and cardiovascular disease. All these are chronic conditions that are linked to overweight and obesity as an independent modifiable risk factor (Hammer & McPhee, 2018). The health improvement plan is therefore going to concentrate on the problem of overweight and obesity.

The Evidence-Based Health Improvement Plan

The population health improvement plan is going to consist mainly of health education for behavioral or lifestyle change (Kornet-van der Aa et al., 2017). It is also going to focus on actions that the community can take to reduce the effect of some of the social determinants of health such as educational achievement. Epidemiological and demographic data reveals that teenage obesity disproportionately affects adolescents from low socioeconomic backgrounds compared to those from more well-to-do families. Given the situation of institutional marginalization that exists in the United States, it follows that the most affected communities are the minority ones made up of mainly Hispanics and African Americans (Frederick et al., 2014). Some of the reasons for this include lack of physical exercise, poor diet deficient in fresh fruits and vegetables, and consumption of cheap high calorie sweetened beverages in schools and at home (due to low purchasing power) amongst others (Baidal et al., 2016; Li et al., 2015).  Assessment 2 -Population Health Improvement Plan

The health improvement plan will be ethical (benefiting the community and causing no harm), culturally sensitive, and inclusive (participatory). Based on the above demographic, epidemiological, and environmental community data assessment, the health improvement plan will include the following:

  • Teaching the community about the dangers of juvenile obesity and the associated healthcare costs due to the chronic conditions it brings, such as type II diabetes.
  • Visiting schools in the community and educating them on the importance of stopping giving the children high calorie sweetened beverages.
  • Encouraging the adolescents to walk to school and back on some days.
  • Encouraging the teenagers and smaller children to watch less television and engage in more outdoor activities.
  • Encouraging the parents to try and include fresh fruits and vegetables as much as possible.
  • To encourage the teenagers to walk or work out in groups in an outdoor setting if there are security issues when alone.

The potential barriers to the implementation of this plan include a lack of appreciation of the threat due to less educational achievement; and a paucity of financial resources or purchasing power to enable buying of fresh produce.

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Criteria for Evaluation, Justification of the Relevance of the Evidence Used, and a Communication Strategy

In order to know if the expected outcomes of the improvement plan have been achieved or not, criteria for evaluation must be decided before embarking on the plan. In this case, it will include (i) the self-calculation of monthly body mass index or BMI values (ii) having the blood pressure checked weekly, and having low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) levels checked quarterly. The justification for the relevance of the evidence used is that it comes from scientific peer-reviewed and published scholarly research. Lastly, the communication strategy that will be used to pas information and get feedback to and from the community (as well as between colleagues) will be two-way communication. There will be interprofessional collaboration and all views of colleagues as well as of the community members will be treated with equal importance. The bioethical principle of justice will be upheld at all times. Assessment 2 -Population Health Improvement Plan

Conclusion

All communities have particular health problems that can be revealed by an assessment of their demographic, epidemiological, and environmental data. This paper proposed an intervention plan for such as health problem in the form of teenage obesity.

References

Baidal, J.A.W., Locks, L.M., Cheng, E.R., Blake-Lamb, T.L., Perkins, M.E. & Taveras, E.M. (2016). Risk factors for childhood obesity in the first 1,000 days: A systematic review. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 50(6), 761-779. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2015.11.012

Frederick, C.B., Snellman, K., & Putnam, R.D. (2014). Increasing socioeconomic disparities in adolescent obesity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(4), 1338–1342. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1321355110

Hammer, D.G., & McPhee, S.J. (Eds). (2018). Pathophysiology of disease: An introduction to clinical medicine, 8th ed. McGraw-Hill Education.

Kornet-van der Aa, D.A., Altenburg, T.M., van Randeraad-van der Zee, C.H. & Chinapaw, M.J.M. (2017). The effectiveness and promising strategies of obesity prevention and treatment programmes among adolescents from disadvantaged backgrounds: A systematic review. Obesity Reviews, 18(5). http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/obr.12519

Li, L., Shen, T., Wen, L.M., Wu, M., He, P., Wang, Y… & He, G. (2015). Lifestyle factors associated with childhood obesity: A cross-sectional study in Shanghai, China. BMC Research Notes, 8(6). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13104-014-0958-y

Assessment 2 -Population Health Improvement Plan