Community Assessment: Social Determinants of Health and Health Promotion

This essay discusses the social determinants of health in a community and the importance of health promotion. It focuses on the Mt Isa community and the vulnerable group of mine workers. The essay explores factors such as age, employment rate, and industry of employment that impact the health of the community. It also highlights the role of community nurses in providing care and promoting health in the community.

Running head: COMMUNITY ASSESSMENT
COMMUNITY ASSESSMENT
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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COMMUNITY ASSESSMENT
PART A:
Category Summary and comparative measurement Inference
Age The median age of Mt Isa community is 31 which is
lower compared to Queensland state and Australian
country that are 37 and 38 respectively. It means 50% of
the people are below 31 years old and other 50% is older
than 31.
Low median age depicts the
higher rate of young people in
the community than the state
and the country. Thus the rate
disease could be high.
Employme
nt
Mt Isa community shows total employment rate of 88%
whereas the state and country shows 87.6% and 88.1%
employment rate respectively.
On the other hand the community has an unemployment
rate of 6.1% which is also lower in terms of the state and
the country unemployment rate which are 7.6% and 6.9%
respectively.
Higher employment rate refers
to the higher socio-economic
structure that helps in taking
better health care measures
than the state population.
Industry of
employment
Mt Isa community has a higher rate of employment in
mining industry that is 27.6% in comparison to state
and country that are 0.2% and 0.1% respectively.
The community also has a higher employment rate in
education and hospital sector that is 8.5% whereas the
state shows 6.8% and the country shows 7.1% of
employment in these sectors.
The community shows a very
high rate of employment in the
mining industry which could
adversely affect the physical
health of the community
people than the state and
country.
Table 1: Summery and Inference of Community health factors
Source: (Abs.gov.au, 2019)

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PART B:
Community health is a phenomenon which depicts the collective condition of health
of a community population. Health of the community depends on several social factors which
are known as the social determinants of health such as age of the community, employment
rate, industry of employment and others. These determinants are the factors that determine
the vulnerability of any group of the community people and the health issues of the
community people as well. Assessing these determinants and the issues would help the health
care personnel of a country to determine the need of the engagement in the community and
the care and health promotion planning for the community as well. In this following essay the
social determinants and the vulnerable group of people of the community would be discussed
along with the health promotion planning and the community engagement.
Social determinants such as employment rate, employment type and age are some of
the factors that affect the health condition of a community in several aspects (Trudel-
Fitzgerald et al., 2016). In this context the median age of the community is responsible for
the resource management of the particular population. The median age of a community is
also the variant that determines the health condition of the community. In case of the Mt Isa
community it shows the median age of the community is 31 that mean the community has
almost 50% of the population who are young (Abs.gov.au, 2019). Thus it can be said that the
community is less vulnerable disease than the state and the country people. The
environmental resources also play key role in the aging of a community thus the countryside
environment is a positive factor for the community. On the other hand the greater
employment rate of a community positively impact over the mental and physical health of the
people (de Andrade et al., 2015). In case of the Mt Isa community the employment rate is
considerably higher than the state and almost equal to the country people as it is 88% thus the
mental health of the community people is positive and it helps in resistance gaining against

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COMMUNITY ASSESSMENT
the chronic mental diseases. However, the percentage of mining employees in this
community is higher than state and the country as of 27.6% that determine the ill physical
condition of the community people. Mining is a work sector where the employees face severe
chemical abnormality and also very high mount physical work as well. Thus the ergonomic
condition of the people is not favorable and it stresses the body in various manners that
increases the vulnerability body to different kind of diseases such as kidney failure, cardiac
diseases, arthritis, brain hemorrhage and much other kind of diseases. However, the education
and hospital industry also took 8.5% of employees from this community that makes that is a
positive factor as well for the community as these are less stressful works than the other ones
(Abs.gov.au, 2019).
The mine workers are the sub groups of the community that are prone to life
threatening diseases. As they work in a stressful environment and their work lets them place
in a condition that forces them to inhale different poisonous gases as a result the physical and
mental degradation took place (Vinnikov, 2016). These group of people experience many
physical diseases such that made them vulnerable to death and their life span is lower than the
other people of the community as well. However, proper health care would help these people
to live more than their life span despite of these ill conditions they face regularly.
These vulnerable people of the community need more attention than the others in
terms of the health care measures as their disease prone nature and the death rate is higher
than the others. The community nurse should consider the interaction to these people in terms
of their health care and safety measures and also promotion of health among these people
(Dempsey & Reilly, 2016). The mine workers are needed to be taught about the safety in the
work place against the poisonous substances (Batras, Duff & Smith, 2016). The community
nurse should communicate with these people and need to converse about their health
problems and prioritize their health condition over anything. These people needed to be

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properly medicated and helped in their community works as well. The nurse needs to
motivate them in certain manners that could help the mine workers to develop positive
mentality about life and they could also be able to devise ways of better living (Garg,
Boynton-Jarrett & Dworkin, 2016). The mining people needed to be considered by the nurse
as the primary target of the care in the community as they are the most vulnerable ones in the
community. The community nurse should be able to give the proper care to the mining
workers at the time of need along with the proper knowledge about safe life leading (Havens,
Gittell & Vasey, 2018).
Health promotion is basically a process by which the change in behavior of the
community improves the healthy living. This process primarily based on the empowerment of
the individuals or a whole population (Binns et al., 2017). Through the communication and
contact with people it could be gained. Here communication refers to the raising awareness in
individuals and slowly among the community. The communication process comprised of
public service announcements, printed advertisements about health care policies, news article
publishing, mass media campaigns and also social media campaigns (World Health
Organization, 2019). All these factors should be planned to decrease the number of chronic
diseases in the community people. However, awareness rising would be successful if the
community nurse take different measures of interacting with the community people and also
empowering them positive communication and behavior. The nurse should be able to educate
the people about healthy living factors. Other than these factors the Government also needs to
develop some improved laws about healthy living policies and also create some regulatory
body to look after the community health practices that comprises different health care
specialists and regulatory personnel as well. All these factors would be more effective if the
Government also be able to change the physical environment of a community and also
motivate the community people by means of changing the socio-economic structure in a

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positive manner. The community nurse should be able to plan the plan the empowerment
program of the Mt Isa community people by considering all these factors (Doherty et al.,
2018). However, the main factor that could embrace the healthy living of the community
would be the health education program as it could be done in direct contact with the
individuals of the community. Thus the communication with the people of the community
plays a key role in the empowerment or health promotion program (Kane et al., 2016).
Based on the above discussion it can be concluded that the socio-economic structure
of a country or community would affect the lives of people of a community. However, the
main social determinants of health are age, employment and the employment type of the
community people. These determinants could be able to devise different kinds of disease in a
population of different age groups or could effectively create a population without any
disease or morbidity. However, efforts of a community nurse could be helpful in rising
awareness among people of the community and the empowerment or health promotion
programs could be also be done to create a healthy community that is almost disease free.
These health promotion processes needed to be interactive and be able to educate the people
of the community about the healthy living policies as well. In this discussion the Mt Isa
community people and the most vulnerable group of people of the group that is the mine
workers are targeted for the health awareness program in the community.

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