The health of any population is at the center of the healthcare facilities and systems across the world. As such there is need to continually conduct healthcare assessments and report the findings to the necessary authorities and stakeholders. Community health assessment concerns itself with the examination of the essential health indicators to identify the critical healthcare problems. More so, the health assessment exercise is meant to find out the community’s healthcare assets and resources, which can be used in improving the quality of healthcare services. While healthcare assessment can be carried out across diverse populations, this writes up will assess the health needs of the older generation, which is prone to many chronic illnesses.
Essential Elements That Make Up a Health Assessment in the Community
Community health assessment is not complete without a focus on various vital components. Some of the elements that need to be considered at a community level include screening which helps determine the benefits of a particular proposal. More so screening helps the participants identify whether the assessment will provide information, which is useful to decision makers and stakeholders. Another element which should be considered in the evaluation is scoping. Scoping, in turn, establishes the scope of health effects regarding the affected populations and methods to be used in the assessment plan. Other essential elements to consider are continuous assessments, reporting, monitoring, and evaluations. The assessment elements can be applied to the community, group and individual level with considerable scope for each respective level.
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Process for Completing a Comprehensive Health Assessment
A comprehensive health assessment plan ensures that all the healthcare needs of a community or a group are met satisfactorily. As such there is need to ensure that, the assessment plan captures all the essential elements and procedures. The first thing that needs to be done is to plan for the healthcare assessment regarding period and the target population regarding its dynamics. Next, there is need to engage the community so that they can own up the whole process in entirety. From here the assessment team develops its vision or objectives regarding what it wants to achieve at the end of the process (Barnett, 2012). Conducting a community health assessment follows to establish the healthcare status of the said community. This assessment helps the nursing team determine which health needs to be prioritized and given much weight. Next, the team develops a community health improvement plan to guide it in the implementation of the health care plan. Implementation and monitoring of the community health improvement plan follow with evaluation of the health plan finalizing this process.
Summary of the Findings
The health improvement plan was conducted in a rural community with limited medical facilities and assets. The target population, in this case, was the older generation, which included people who are over 65 years. The reason for selecting these individuals is the fact that they are more prone to suffer from chronic diseases as compared to the other younger individuals (Williams, 2015). In the assessment, it was found out that 80 percent of these individuals suffered from chronic disease mostly circulatory, renal and pulmonary. Additionally, at least 60 percent of these people lacked medical insurance meaning they had no hope of getting treatment. In this case, it is clear that the healthcare needs of this population are diverse, which means immediate intervention. Surprisingly the few nursing professionals in this community have done little to avert the situation. In this case, the assessment team took it upon itself to educate the nurses on their role in raising a healthy community. More so the nursing professionals in this community would be part of implementing and monitoring the community health improvement plan to ensure it yields the desired results.
References
Barnett, K. (2012). Best Practices for Community Health Needs Assessment and Implementation Strategy Development: A Review of Scientific Methods, Current Practices, and Future Potential. Report of Proceedings from a Public Forum and Interviews of Experts. Retrieved on 8 March 2018, from http://www.phi.org/uploads/application/files/dz9vh55o3bb2x56lcrzyel83fwfu3mvu24oqqvn5z6qaeiw2u4.pdf.
Williams, J. W. (2015). Utilizing Evidence to Address the Health and Health Care Needs of Veterans. North Carolina Medical Journal , 76 (5), 294-298.
