Community Strategic Plan - NUR 561

This document discusses the process of community assessment and health promotion through a Community Strategic Plan. It highlights the strengths, weaknesses, challenges, and concerns of the chosen community. It also discusses the potential barriers to implementing community health plans and provides insights on how to address them. The document is relevant to NUR 561 course and is suitable for students, researchers, and professionals interested in community health assessment and promotion.

Running Head: COMMUNITY STRATEGIC PLAN
NUR 561: Community Strategic Plan (Part A)
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1COMMUNITY STRATEGIC PLAN
Resources required for Community Assessment:
The process of community assessment helps in the thoroughly studying a community and their
strengths, requirements, the challenges it is facing, and also assets like resources available in the
chosen community and the skills and talents of the individuals belonging to it. Thus, a
community health assessment refers to the comprehensive study of the condition of the health of
individuals belonging to the chosen community, and taking note of the recurring health and
healthcare issues. The community health assessment can be conducted by employing Gordon’s
Functional Health patterns method (Ctb.ku.edu, 2019). The method studies disease patterns by
interacting with the patients and carefully assessing their medical reports to help understand the
management strategies to eliminate the issue.
The resources required for this type of assessment can be based on the relationship between
individuals and their environment, or on an informed understanding of their socio-economic
status, cultural differences, as well as the number of different languages spoken among the
different members of the community. These aspects highlighted by the community assessment
can help one understand the different community members, their aspirations and goals as a
community, as well as gaps or requirements they seek and their impact on the rest of the
population (Fillenbaum, 2013). Thus, in order to collect these resources to help assess the chosen
community, different surveys, public forums, interviews are held. The main advantage of these
assessments is to keep in check the quality of education, health benefits and availability of other
necessities of the community, in order to improve their quality of living. For example,
communities which exhibit an extreme rate of high school dropouts, these assessments can help
in providing a holistic approach to the issue. In addition to help create awareness about the

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necessity of education, this can help find effective ways in order to keep the younger population
in school.
Community Strengths and Concerns:
The process of community assessment highlights the strengths, weaknesses, challenges and
concerns of the chosen community. In my community assessment, the biggest strength that was
highlighted was the engagement and interest of the community members to better their quality of
life and to effectively maintain the assets they own (Ctb.ku.edu, 2019). The citizens actively
volunteered to help understand the different assets of the community and also the different
problems that needed to be tended, by filling out surveys and attending the different public
forums held.
The following are some of the assets or strengths of my community:
 Many around the block child care clinics are available, with adequate number of efficient
physicians and doctors. Some daycare centers have also opened for children having
working parents.
 High schools have efficient learning programs. They have not shied away from
discussing important and necessary lessons like sex education, career counselling,
business studies and many more.
 For the older population, the community has about two efficiently working old age
homes. Some of the community members have set up different around the clock help
services- from delivering food to helping them manage their payments- for the elderly.

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Some of the main concerns that were highlighted during the assessment:
The community lacked efficient services like plumbing, electricians, carpenters and more. There
was also lack of health promotion among the younger generation, as the surveys showed an
inclination of the population towards substance abuse. Thus, the community requires to focus on
different anti-substance abuse programs and fund more rehabilitation centers. The community
also needs to focus on the maintenance of the city owned properties, like some of the high
schools, the community library and more.
Addressing these concerns and eliminating these issues, will thus help better the quality of life of
the people in my community.
Potential barriers to implementing community health plans
The process of a community assessment is a very time-consuming process and requires an
elaborate understanding of the community. Thus, the assessment’s dependence on members of
the community, it makes the whole process vulnerable to certain barriers. Even though the
community members actively participated in the survey and voiced their opinions on the
different issues that were faced, they failed to come up with a solution for any of the stated
problems (Rubio-Valera et al., 2014). The barriers also included the lack of understanding of the
questions asked in the survey, while some answers were far from accurate, mainly due to the
ignorance of the people, which made it harder to assess the issues faced by the community. Some
people complained about the lack of facilities of assistance for old age people, even though they
are available. Some conservative members spoke about how sex education in high schools were

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unnecessary and that it was ruining their children, despite the high incidence of teenage
pregnancies in the community.
In healthcare, it was found that the professionals, like the nurses and pharmacists lacked proper
knowledge or skills to help implement effective interventions and execute the instruction given
by doctors. Some people also lacked the knowledge of the transmission, effects, and the do’s and
don’ts of different diseases and chronic conditions (Sheng, Chang, Teo & Lin, 2013). Thus, it is
safe to say that even though there are many healthcare facilities, there is limited access to health
promotion. There is also lack of availability of healthy foods, as the community has a lot of fast
food joints which are always crowded.
Thus, the community should educate its members more regarding the importance of sex
education in high schools, promote a healthy lifestyle along with healthy diet plans to prevent the
incidence of chronic disease like cardio-vascular diseases and even cancer (Sotos-Prieto et al.,
2015). The members should fund rehabilitation centers and parents should be trained to take a
holistic approach, if and when they find their children abusing addictive substances. Thus, an
active participation would be crucial in planning and implementing the viable solutions for the
respective issues raised in the assessment.

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References
Ctb.ku.edu. (2019). Chapter 3. Assessing Community Needs and Resources | Section 1.
Developing a Plan for Assessing Local Needs and Resources | Main Section | Community
Tool Box. Ctb.ku.edu.
Ctb.ku.edu. (2019). Chapter 3. Assessing Community Needs and Resources | Section 5.
Analyzing Community Problems | Main Section | Community Tool Box. Ctb.ku.edu.
Fillenbaum, G. (2013). Multidimensional Functional Assessment of Older Adults. Psychology
Press, 1st Edition. doi:10.4324/9780203771563
Rubio-Valera, M., Pons-Vigués, M., Martínez-Andrés, M., Moreno-Peral, P., Berenguera, A., &
Fernández, A. (2014). Barriers and Facilitators for the Implementation of Primary
Prevention and Health Promotion Activities in Primary Care: A Synthesis through Meta-
Ethnography. PLoS ONE, 9(2), e89554. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0089554
Sheng, M., Chang, S., Teo, T., & Lin, Y. (2013). Knowledge barriers, knowledge transfer, and
innovation competitive advantage in healthcare settings. Management Decision, 51(3),
461-478. doi:10.1108/00251741311309607
Sotos-Prieto, M., Bhupathiraju, S., Mattei, J., Fung, T., Li, Y., Pan, A., & Willett, W. et al.
(2015). Changes in Diet Quality Scores and Risk of Cardiovascular Disease Among US
Men and Women. Circulation, 132(23), 2212-2219.
doi:10.1161/circulationaha.115.017158