Vulnerable Population Assessment

This assignment asks students to identify a vulnerable population in their community and assess one community health problem that impacts this group. The student will use information collected from a windshield survey and weekly discussions to inform their assessment. They will also find an article about the vulnerable group from the Chamberlain library and cite it in their paper. The student's paper should be no more than 4 pages long and follow APA formatting.

Milestone 2: Vulnerable Population Assessment
PURPOSE
The purpose of this paper is to identify and assess a vulnerable population in your community.
You will also describe one community health problem that impacts this vulnerable group. This
problem must be one that a community health nurse could positively impact.
COURSE OUTCOMES
This assignment enables the student to meet the following course outcomes:
2. Assess the health needs of individuals, families, aggregates, and communities using
demographic and epidemiological data to identify population health risks. (PO 4)
6. Utilize a systems-based and collaborative approach to address factors that influence the
health of a community and population health problems. (PO 2)
Directions
Watch the Milestone 2 tutorial (click this link or copy and paste it into your browser):
http://www.brainshark.com/devry/Milestone2_2016
This APA paper is expected to be no more than four pages in length (not including the title page
and reference list). Below are the requirements for successful completion of this paper. Please
use the following categories as the first level headings on your paper. APA formatting helps
you to format your paper in a professional manner and provides consistent methods for citing
your sources within the paper and providing the complete reference on the reference page. See
the documents in the APA category in Doc Sharing for assistance with APA formatting. There is
an APA template that you can use to type on and this will help with APA formatting. The Student
Success Strategies resource has a great sections on writing scholarly papers and APA formatting
(to find resource watch:
http://www.brainshark.com/devry/Student_Success_Strategies/zHszgnQAKzBXqbz0)
Based on your community assessment, including your windshield survey and the assessment
information from your discussions, identify one aggregate or vulnerable population in your
community that faces a community health problem. See units five (5) and six (6) in your Nies
and McEwen text for examples of vulnerable populations and aggregates. Your community must
be the area where you live or work.
A. Introduction (one paragraph): The introduction should be interesting and capture the
reader’s attention.
 Provide a brief description of your community including the city name and state
and key features.
 Briefly introduce one vulnerable population that you identified in your
assessment.
 Discuss the purpose of your paper. The purpose statement of the paper should
relate to assessing this vulnerable population in your community.

B. Vulnerable Population Overview (one to two paragraphs):
 Describe one vulnerable group in your community in greater detail.
 Include your observations about this group from the windshield survey.
 Discuss events or trends that have affected this vulnerable group such as
economic conditions, trends in health related behaviors or disease rates, etc.
C. Strengths, Risk Factors, and/or Barriers (two to three paragraphs):
 Discuss the strengths, risk factors, and/or barriers that impact this vulnerable
population’s health.
 Include support from at least one scholarly peer-reviewed journal article in this
discussion. Search peer reviewed journals to find a scholarly article that discuss
the strengths, risk factors, and/or barriers faced by this vulnerable group.
Summarize what you learned from this article and cite the source in the text and
reference page (Author, year). For this section, you must choose at least one
scholarly article from a peer-reviewed journal. The article must be less than 10
years old (less than 5 years is best). You may include and cite your textbook or
other scholarly sources as well, but they do not count as the scholarly journal
article.
D. Community Resources (one to two paragraphs): Search your local public health
department website, the internet, the local newspaper and/or telephone book for health
resources available in your community for this vulnerable group.
 Briefly describe the resources in your community that are available for this group.
 Are these resources adequate? Discuss gaps in services that you identified.
E. Community Health Problem Diagnosis (one to two paragraphs):
 Based on your assessment and the Healthy People 2020 objectives, identify and
discuss one priority community health problem that a community health nurse
could positively impact. Examples include an increase in teen pregnancies,
prevalence of cancer, high incidence of tobacco use, above average infant
mortality etc. The problem must relate to the vulnerable population you identified.
 Go to the Healthy People topic areas at
http://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/topics-objectives. Find a topic area that
relates to your vulnerable population. Click on the topic area and then click on
the green “Objectives” tab. Find and state the Healthy People 2020 specific

numbered objective (not just a goal) that describes your problem (ex. for teen
pregnancy, the topic area Family Planning is relevant, click the green objectives
tab and you might choose FP-8.1 “Reduce pregnancies among adolescent
females aged 15 to 17 years” (US Department of Health and Human Services:
Healthy People 2020, 2016, Objectives: Family Planning, para 8).
F. Summary (one paragraph):
 Summarize important points from the body of your paper including the vulnerable
group you identified and key factors that you discussed above that affect the
health of this group.
 Include a statement about the priority problem you identified.
 End with a concluding statement.
G. Reference Page: The Reference Page should start on a new page (insert a page break).
All references should be cited within the body of the paper as (Author, year) and the full
reference should be included in APA format on the reference page. A url link alone is not
an adequate reference. See the APA Guidelines in Doc Sharing for examples of properly
formatted references.
GuidelINES
 Application: Use Microsoft Word 2010™ to create this assignment.
 Scholarly Writing: APA format is required. Review APA documents in the Doc Sharing
and use the free resources of SmartThinking for writing tutors
 Use the categories above as APA headings for the sections of your paper.
 Length: This paper is expected to be no more than 4 pages in length (not including the
title page and reference list).
 Quotations should be minimal – please paraphrase your sources. A maximum of one
quotation should be used for this paper.
 Submission: Submit your file via the basket in the Dropbox: Caring for Populations:
Milestone 2 Vulnerable Population Assessment, by 11:59 p.m. MT Sunday of Week 4.
 Save your paper with your last name in the document title (e.g., “Smith Vulnerable
Population Assessment”).
 Late Submission: See the course policy on late submissions.
BEST PRACTICES IN PREPARING THE PAPER
The following are best practices in preparing this project.
 Use the assessment information that you collected in your windshield survey and weekly
discussions to identify the vulnerable group of interest.
 Choose one nursing problem specific to your community that this vulnerable group faces.
 Find one article about this vulnerable group from the Chamberlain library from a peer
reviewed journal.

 Visit the Chamberlain Care Student Success Strategies resource for help with writing a
scholarly paper, APA formatting, and library navigation
(http://www.brainshark.com/devry/Student_Success_Strategies/zHszgnQAKzBXqbz0).
 Make sure all elements of the paper are addressed and headings for each category are
included.
 Review directions thoroughly.
 Cite all sources within the paper as well as on the Reference page.
 Proofread prior to final submission.
 Check for spelling and grammar errors prior to final submission.
 Use the “A” column of the rubric below to ensure that you have included all the needed
elements.
 Abide by the CCN academic integrity policy – use the Week 1 Turnitin Draft Dropbox to
ensure that your similarity index is less than 24%, if not, revise and resubmit prior to
the deadline. Please review the documents related to TurnItIn in DocSharing.