Assignment: Capella Policy Change for Addressing Public Health Problems Research Paper

Assignment: Capella Policy Change for Addressing Public Health Problems Research Paper

Assignment: Capella Policy Change for Addressing Public Health Problems Research Paper

Question Description
Create a 3-5-page report presenting three or more specific high-priority health improvement needs in a community of your choosing.

INTRODUCTION
Each of us belongs to multiple populations: our neighborhood community, workplace, family, and so on. In the workplace, employers recognize the positive benefits of a healthy lifestyle such as reduced absenteeism, improved productivity, and fewer health insurance claims. In the community, health care organizations, community health centers, health districts, and other key stakeholders promote wellness and a healthy lifestyle in hopes to improve the overall health of the community. Reducing obesity, the harmful effects of smoking, drug, and alcohol use, or the transmission of HIV may be the focus of community-wide health initiatives. Overall improvements in health status across a given population are an important goal of politicians, legislators, employers, and community leaders.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has emphasized the importance of these initiatives, and health care leaders are tasked with building cultures of health and wellness for their communities (Nash, Fabius, Skoufalos, & Clarke, 2016). Population health initiatives have been widely impacted since the passage of the law as new programs are introduced to achieve the key objectives. These programs have evolved from a focus on a single illness to more robust, comprehensive interventions that seek to improve the overall health of the population (Nash, Fabius, Skoufalos, & Clarke, 2016). Collaborative efforts between health care providers, politicians, and community organizations are beginning to form as stakeholders recognize the wide variety of services necessary to treat an entire population (Nash, Fabius, Skoufalos, & Clarke, 2016).

At the highest level, the United States Congress and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) establish health care policy while individual health care workers are tasked with implementation at the lowest level. As of this writing, the Trump administration is making efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Although the new administration indicates that it has many of the same goals and objectives of improving population health as the previous administration, the far-reaching effects and final policies remain unknown.

An important concept in community and population health is epidemiology, which is defined as the study of the distribution and determinants (causes and risk factors) of health-related states and events in specified populations (CDC, 2017). It is a method used to find the causes of health outcomes and diseases in populations (CDC, 2017). Public health announcements, such as news of flu outbreaks, are based on epidemiology studies. Epidemiology is an important part of public health, as it helps to identify specific risk factors for diseases to improve preventative healthcare outcomes. Epidemiology is data driven and quantitative in design (CDC, 2017). It relies on sound research, as it tests hypotheses grounded in biology, behavioral sciences, and physics (CDC, 2017). Epidemiological studies can cover a wide variety of public health concerns including smoking, obesity, maternal health, HIV, influenza, vaccine use, and outcomes.

Reference
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2016). What is epidemiology? Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/careerpaths/k12teacherroadmap/…

Nash, D. B., Fabius, R. J., Skoufalos, A., & Clarke, J. L. (2016). Population health: Creating a culture of wellness (2nd ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.

DEMONSTRATION OF PROFICIENCY
By successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the course competencies through the following assessment scoring guide criteria:

Competency 1: Integrate principles of epidemiology, population health, and community engagement to plan interventions.
Identify salient characteristics that define a community.
Assess engagement of community stakeholders.
Identify specific health improvement needs of a community by using epidemiological information.
Competency 2: Differentiate and evaluate evidence-based treatment models and prevention models designed to promote wellness and disease management for population health.
Evaluate a treatment model and a wellness model.
Competency 4: Communicate in a manner that is scholarly, professional, and respectful of the diversity, dignity, and integrity of others and is consistent with expectations for health care professionals.
Write clearly and logically, with correct use of spelling, grammar, punctuation, and mechanics.
Write following APA style for in-text citation, quotes, and references.
Note: It is recommended that you complete the assessments in this course in the order they are presented.

PREPARATION
For this assessment, you will be discussing high-priority health improvement needs in a community of your choice. These needs could relate to any number of areas related to the health of populations in the community. Some examples for potential areas include nutrition, smoking, diabetes management, drug use, or other concerns.

To prepare for this assessment, it is recommended you complete the following:

Use the Internet to locate a health needs assessment for your local community and explore websites with a .gov, .org, or .edu extension. You may find multiple community needs assessments depending on where you live.
Feel free to download several reports and compare them; you may find it interesting to review both similarities and inconsistencies among the reports.
Identify the salient characteristics of your community, such as geography and demographics. Also, identify qualitative information that characterizes the community, such as common perspectives and interests or other bases of social ties. Information of this kind may be provided in the community needs assessment, or you may cite it from other sources.
Conduct a second search for epidemiology trends in your community focusing on government, nonprofit, and educational Web sites. You may find multiple sources depending on where you live.
Are the trends identified in the epidemiology reports consistent with the needs identified in the community needs assessments you read?
Use the information you have gathered to identify three, specific, high-priority health improvement needs of your community.
Assess how government, community agencies, and other stakeholders are currently addressing each problem.
Refer to the Prevention and Public Health Stories in the States page, on the Trust for America’s Health Web site, for potential solutions.
Complete the Vila Health: Community Health Mission and included questions to develop your knowledge around best-practices in researching population health data and applying models.
INSTRUCTIONS
Based on the community needs assessment and your research, write a 3–5-page report discussing three or more specific high-priority health improvement needs in your community. As mentioned above, these could relate to nutrition, smoking, diabetes management, drug use, or other concerns. The goal of your report is to describe the needs of the community and how the community is currently addressing them.

Consult the scoring guide to ensure you address all criteria at the level you desire.

Include the following in your report:

Identify salient characteristics that define a community.
These characteristics include considerations such as geography, demographics, and qualitative information that characterizes the community, such as common perspectives and interests, or other bases of social ties.
Identify specific health improvement needs of a community by using epidemiological information.
Be sure to identify three, specific, high-priority health improvement needs of your community.
Support your choices by citing epidemiological information from your research.
Assess the current engagement of community stakeholders.
Stakeholders could include government, community agencies, private citizens, and health care organizations.
These stakeholders may be involved in programs to address your identified health improvement needs or may be directly impacted by them.
How are these stakeholders involved or impacted by your identified health improvement needs?
Describe treatment or wellness models that address an identified community health need.
Identify treatment or wellness models that are currently being used to address at least one of the high-priority health improvement needs of your community.
Describe these strategies or approaches currently being used.
Examine each strategy to determine if it is based on a treatment model or a wellness model.
How you can determine which kind of strategy is employed?
Note: You must identify at least one strategy based on a treatment model and one based on a wellness model. This may require you to look at more than one of your identified community health improvement needs. Also, it is possible you may need to do more research to meet this requirement.
Briefly discuss general advantages and disadvantages of treatment models versus wellness models from these examples.
Additional Requirements
Written communication: Ensure writing is clear and well organized to support orderly exposition of content, with correct spelling, grammar, and syntax.
Length: Submit 3–5 typed and double-spaced content pages set in Times New Roman, 12 points, not including title page and reference page.
References: Cite at least three current scholarly or professional resources.
APA formatting: Use APA style for references and citations. You may wish to refer to the following APA resources to help with your structure, formatting, and style:
APA Style Paper Tutorial [DOCX].
APA Style Paper Template [DOCX].

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You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.

ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CLASS

Discussion Questions (DQ)

Initial responses to the DQ should address all components of the questions asked, include a minimum of one scholarly source, and be at least 250 words.
Successful responses are substantive (i.e., add something new to the discussion, engage others in the discussion, well-developed idea) and include at least one scholarly source.
One or two sentence responses, simple statements of agreement or “good post,” and responses that are off-topic will not count as substantive. Substantive responses should be at least 150 words.
I encourage you to incorporate the readings from the week (as applicable) into your responses.
Weekly Participation

Your initial responses to the mandatory DQ do not count toward participation and are graded separately.
In addition to the DQ responses, you must post at least one reply to peers (or me) on three separate days, for a total of three replies.
Participation posts do not require a scholarly source/citation (unless you cite someone else’s work).
Part of your weekly participation includes viewing the weekly announcement and attesting to watching it in the comments. These announcements are made to ensure you understand everything that is due during the week.
APA Format and Writing Quality

Familiarize yourself with APA format and practice using it correctly. It is used for most writing assignments for your degree. Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for APA paper templates, citation examples, tips, etc. Points will be deducted for poor use of APA format or absence of APA format (if required).
Cite all sources of information! When in doubt, cite the source. Paraphrasing also requires a citation.
I highly recommend using the APA Publication Manual, 6th edition.
Use of Direct Quotes

I discourage overutilization of direct quotes in DQs and assignments at the Masters’ level and deduct points accordingly.
As Masters’ level students, it is important that you be able to critically analyze and interpret information from journal articles and other resources. Simply restating someone else’s words does not demonstrate an understanding of the content or critical analysis of the content.
It is best to paraphrase content and cite your source.
LopesWrite Policy

For assignments that need to be submitted to LopesWrite, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me.
Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes.
Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own?
Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score.
Late Policy

The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies.
Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances.
If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect.
I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension.
As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading.
Communication

Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me:
Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class.
Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours.