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Almost
to the end! Welcome to Module 7!!
Assignment Description
The final community assessment paper
will be submitted in Module 8.
This week please add the hours you
have spent working on the community assessment to your practice experience
hours in Project Concert for Module 7. Submit your hours by midnight,
Monday, January 24th.
Only the hours for Project Concert
are submitted this week and this is how you will be graded. Find access to
Project Concert in the Learning Materials.
Practice hours relate to time spent
on your ‘community assessment’ activities. (Discussion Board work does not
apply). You should have approximately 10-14 hours for Module 7’s portion of the
community assessment.
Please submit a
screenshot of the hours you submitted into Project Concert to the Module 7
dropbox. This is your GRADE for module 7 – an easy 100%
The community assessment takes TWO
weeks to complete! Do NOT wait until
module 8 to begin working on this assignment.
Details
of the Module 8 assignment – Begin this week!
During the next two weeks, you will
complete a full assessment of your own community.
You will be using this for your
Community Health II course as you plan, implement, and evaluate an education
teaching project within your community designed to address an identified health
concern of a chosen population – so consider this as you complete the general
community assessment.
For this week, in the Module 7
Overview, several areas must be assessed for a fully developed assessment. Review
this section thoroughly.
ANSWER:
Defining the Community of
Tuolumne County
In defining a community, it is important to know of its
population health, including the biological, psychological, and social
well-being of its members (Clark, 2015). This essay will give a general
description of Tuolumne County, which includes geographical information,
characteristics of the community and provides economic status, and expresses health
concerns for the elderly. Through extensive research from surveys, interviews,
and data gathering from the internet, a plethora of information was gathered and
a greater understanding and knowledge of this community was obtained. The
purpose of this assessment is to aid in identifying the needs of the community
and to review the available resources to identify any deficits. The community assessment of the older adult
population of Tuolumne County will serve as a platform to identify the
incidence of health concerns and measure the city’s ability towards achieving
Healthy People 2020 objectives.
Assessment
The community that is being defined is called Tuolumne County; it
was incorporated in 1850 and covers 2,274 square miles of land and 54 square
miles of water. Sonora is the county seat of Tuolumne County and has the
highest percentage of residents, followed by Tuolumne city, and 16 other
communities (Tuolumne County, 2017). Health care consists of one local hospital
serving the county, several outlying clinics, doctors’ offices, specialists,
and county social services offices (22 buildings). From a health perspective,
the most common cause of death within the county is the same as it is in
California, cardiovascular disease; which combines heart disease and stroke,
while the second most leading cause of death is cancer (Tuolumne County Public
Health, 2017). Tuolumne County has done well in promoting health through the
local hospital and the local public health department. The hospital has a
state-of-the-art cardiac catheterization lab, that employs four cardiologists
and two interventional radiologists, and opened a new cancer pavilion in 2018
that has top-quality screening and diagnostic imaging services, along with a
two-million-dollar linear accelerator that gives more precise radiation
treatment for cancer patients (Adventist Health, Sonora, 2018).
Demographics of the
Community
Tuolumne County is a rural community, that is located within the
foothills of what is termed as the Motherlode gold country, is about 120 miles
from San Francisco, about an hour from Yosemite, and is located on the western
slope of the Sierra mountains (Tuolumne County, 2017-2018). As of 2019, the
population for Tuolumne County was 53,864 (a 0.4% decline from 2015-216), with
the median age of 48 years old, the median household income of $50,731, a
poverty rate of 14.2%, and an average property value of $259,800 (0.19%
growth). There are almost 6,000 students in the public elementary through the high
school system. The one local college within the community serves for vocational
training in registered nursing, culinary arts, forestry, and fire science
(Tuolumne County, 2017). The total live births for 2017-2018 were 447.
Population diversity is over 81% White, 11.6% Hispanic, 1.75% Black, 1.28%
Asian, and other; Poverty levels are highest among Whites and then followed by
Asians. The largest industries are healthcare/social assistance, retail,
accommodation, and food services. Economically the two largest employers for
the county are the local hospital and outlying clinical services, and a local
casino that is operated and owned by the Miwuk Indian tribe (Tuolumne County,
2017).
Information from
Government Agencies
Tuolumne County health status profile for 2018 revealed statistical
information for Tuolumne County relating to the mortality and morbidity rates
of the young and old, along with contributing health status indicators, persons
in poverty, STD’s, and age-specific birth rate for mothers 15-19 (County Health
Status Profile, 2018). Through statistics provided by the health status profile,
there were almost 700 deaths in Tuolumne County for 2014-2016, with the
majority being due to either cardiovascular disease or cancer; 236 were due to
cardiovascular and 142 attributed to all types of cancer. The incidence of STDs
for the same period was 186, with 114 people being infected with chlamydia.
Nationally, chlamydia was reported to have over one million new cases in 2016,
among females from 14 to 24 years old (Center for Disease Control and
Prevention, 2019).