Community Health Assessment: Harrow Borough Health Profile Analysis

This report presents an analysis of the community health profile of Harrow Borough, London, focusing on community health assessment. It defines key terms like community health profile, monitoring, and surveillance. The report examines the demographic characteristics, determinants, and health status indicators within Harrow Borough, using data from Public Health England. The analysis highlights implications of the findings, particularly the identification of vulnerable populations, including older adults and infants, and discusses various health need theories. It also emphasizes the importance of community assets in fostering sustainable development and improving health outcomes. The report concludes by acknowledging data limitations and stressing the need for comprehensive community asset assessment.

Running head: Nursing
PUBLIC HEALTH PROMOTION
By (Student's Name)
Class
Teacher
Name of the School
City
Date

Healthcare 2
Introduction
The paper explores community health assessment with a focus on community health
profile. The paper provides an analysis of the community health profile of Harrow Borough,
London, and the implication. This is important for understanding the health needs and ways to
improve the health needs of the community. Various terms such as community health
assessment, monitoring, and surveillance and community health profile are described within this
paper. Another area that is analyzed within this paper is the community health profile in terms of
determinants and indicators of health. The make conclusion after proper analysis of the
implication of the community profile finding and various populations groups that can be a major
focus of the community. This paper uses data from public health England that give real-time
data. Therefore, this paper presents an analysis of various aspects of community health needs for
Harrow Borough, London local authority.
Background
Community health need assessment refers to the process through which the community is
used to identify community health needs. Community health needs assessment enable the
community that is involved in the assessment to prioritize its health needs. This implies that
community health needs assessment enable the community to plan and take action on areas that
remain unattended to. Community health need assessment is used to determine various health
need of a community that also assist the relevant health authority or organization in taking action
(Duncan 2016).

Healthcare 3
Community health profile refers to systematically compiled data about a community that
describe the health needs of a community. Community health profile, therefore, involves the
collection of data that shows the health need of a community. Community health profile assists
in the collection of data of a community that help in the understanding of the health need of
community (Mathie, Cameron & Gibson 2017).
Monitoring and surveillance refer to those activities that involve keeping watch and
surveillance on various things or collection to data that enable responding to a situation.
Monitoring and surveillance related to community health need assessment in some ways (Mpofu
2014).
Community health profile
The public health England provides short and long profile information for every local
authority. The short health profile is mainly health information that short and accessible to the
public while a long profile includes long-term and comprehensive information available for
public health. Local authority health profile brings together various data that exist that also
include all health indicators. The health profile enables the government to take action on various
health issues affecting the local authority. Some of the population health indicators are
categorized as demographic, determinants, deprivation and health status (Goodman, Bunnell &
Posner 2014).
Local authority health profile is a health profile that provides the health data and
information as a small area usually local authority area. Harrow Borough, London is another
local authority area with well-defined health profile. Understanding Harrow Borough health

Healthcare 4
profile requires a deeper consideration of various health measurement indicators and
determinants (Harrow Council 2018).
The demographic characteristics refer to various population characteristics of an area that
determines the health profile of that area. The demographic characteristics of harrow borough,
London can be described in a number of ways. Firstly, the average age is approximately 38
years. Secondly, 53.7% of people living in Harrow were born in England. Thirdly, the number of
people married is approximately 50.6% of the population. Fourthly, the total population of the
area is approximately 239,056 that composes of 49% male and 51% female. The community is
majorly made up of older people of age above 65 years. With more than 33% of people in a
family receiving support as a result of old age. Community long profile provides other feature
such as life expectancy of 83.9 years, various causes of mortality and low birth weight, child
obesity and various types of harm (World Health Organization 2016).
Deprivation refers to inequalities or disadvantages that are caused by absences certain
benefits or services in a community. Deprivation as an aspect of inequality is measured through
indicators such as crime, income, education, health, employment, barriers to housing service and
living environment. Long community profile provides various health red indicators such as
education and health as 13.5% each (Harrow Council 2018).
Health status is the absence or presence of disease or sign within the body of a person.
Health status is a key indicator for the health profile of a community that determines the health
needs of that community. The health status of the community shows there are different causes of
deaths especially diseases based mortality. Harrow’s Standardised Mortality Ratio (SMR) for
cancer deaths aged under 75 years with three areas showing have SMRs over 100, indicating that
there are more premature deaths due to cancer (Harrow Council 2018a).

Healthcare 5
The implication of the findings of the community health profile
The community health profile findings indicate that the population is made up of
disadvantage group or vulnerable people that are mainly older adult population and infants. The
population is mainly made up of older people that is approximately 37000 and is on the rise. This
implies that age people that need high health attention are the majority. Besides, most older
people requires caregivers to ensure good quality of health. Another group of the vulnerable
population is made of infants that have witnessed the highest number of low birth weight (Peters
2013).
There are many different theories of health needs that help in the interpretation of
community health profile. For instance, Bradshaw’s taxonomy of need provides various types of
such as normative, felt, expressed and comparative needs. Population trend and the transition is
another area that makes use of various population trends and changes that occur within a
population giving a future projection of the trend (Nel 2017). Demographic patterns give various
groups of people within a community that are vulnerable or need specific need. Epidemiology
trends also give community readiness and ability to take care of the population in terms of
disease spread. These population theories are used to interpret community profile through an
understanding of both the needs of the community and the trend in terms of various community
indicators. Moreover, theories of health need enable understanding of the priority need and other
need that is important for planning within a community. Some health need theories such as
Henderson's Nursing Need Theory provide basic care that vulnerable populations need to be
given within a community (Leppin et al, 2018).
Community assets are collective resources that the community has that enable finding a
solution and improving health or wellbeing of people. Asset-Based Community Development

Healthcare 6
focuses on assets found within the community and mobilizes these assets for realizing social
development (Willetts, Asker, Carrard & Winterford 2014). In this sense community assets are
what people have within a community in terms of personal skills as oppose to what the
community lack (Deficit Based approach) which is also a community assets model. The skill that
people have composed of the capacity of the community as compared to what the community
lack. This capacity and capability of the community in terms of personal skill that is possessed
by people within a community determine the ability of the community to find a solution to social
problems and improve health (Ife 2013).
The community assets as per the assets based community approach should be added to
future community profile and health need assessment as it gives both micro-assets and macro
environment of a community. Community assets give the assets in terms of individuals skills,
associations and institutions that form the community. This provides a sustainable development
approach enables community and institutions within the community to develop their strength.
Moreover, the community assets are key for assessing the strength of the community rather than
the deficit that enable the sustainable development of the community. This is also important for
understanding the needs of the community in terms of assets such as associations and institutions
that together built up community assets. Assessing the community assets will also enable
profiling of the community in terms of areas that need to be prioritized when improving health
(Henry 2013).
Conclusion
In conclusion, the community profile shows some limitations that include limited
accurate data as there are some variations. The data as provided give some variation and the most
vulnerable group are the aged that has high need requirement. Besides, there is some information

Healthcare 7
that is also needed to better understand the community. The information needed is mainly the
community assets that show the capability and the capacity of the community to foster
sustainable development.
Reference
Duncan, D. (2016) The components of effective collective impact. Rockville, MD: Clear Impact.
Available at https://clearimpact.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/The-Components-of-Effective-
Collective-Impact.pdf [Accessed on 2, April 2020]
Goodman, R.A., Bunnell, R., & Posner, S.F. (October 2014) What is community health?
Examining the meaning of an evolving field in public health. Preventive Medicine. Vol.67 Suppl
1: S58–61. DOI:10.1016/j.ypmed.2014.07.028.
Harrow Council (2018) Harrow Vitality Profiles 2018-2019 health. Available at
https://www.google.com/url?
sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjy75-
Z78roAhXQMMAKHQmlA2cQFjABegQIBBAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.harrow.gov.uk
%2Fdownloads%2Ffile%2F24322%2Fhealth&usg=AOvVaw0XAZsJh8GDOC0SkvHgwWvE
[Accessed on 2, April 2020]
Harrow Council (2018a) Public Health Annual Report for 2018. available at
https://www.google.com/url?

Healthcare 8
sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjy75-
Z78roAhXQMMAKHQmlA2cQFjAAegQIAxAB&url=https%3A%2F
%2Fwww2.harrow.gov.uk%2Fdocuments%2Fs150203%2FPublic%2520Health%2520Annual
%2520Report%25202018.pdf&usg=AOvVaw2mqMlT0wPdgkKWLyOfqJDo [Accessed on 2,
April 2020]
Henry, H. (2013) Exploring an asset-based approach to nursing. Nursing Times, vol.109, pp 15-
17.
Ife, J. W. (2013) Community development in an uncertain world: Vision, analysis and practice.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Leppin A.L., Schaepe, K., Egginton, J., Dick, S., Branda, M., Christiansen, L., Burow, N.M.,
Gaw, C., & Montori, V.M. (January 2018) Integrating community-based health promotion
programs and primary care: a mixed-methods analysis of feasibility. BMC Health Services
Research, vol.18, no.1, pp 72. DOI:10.1186/s12913-018-2866-7
Mathie, A., Cameron, J., & Gibson, K. (2017) Asset-based and citizen-led development: Using a
diffracted power lens to analyze the possibilities and challenges. Progress in Development
Studies, vol.17, no.1, pp 1-13. DOI: 10.1177/1464993416674302.
Mpofu, E. (2014) Community-oriented health services: practices across disciplines. Mpofu,
Elias. New York, NY.
Nel, H. (2017) A comparison between the asset-oriented and needs-based community
development approaches in terms of systems changes. Practice, pp 1-20. DOI:
10.1080/09503153.2017.1360474

Healthcare 9
Peters, B. (Ed.). (2013) Applying an Asset-Based Community-Driven Development approach in
Ethiopia, 2003-2011: Final internal evaluation report. Antigonish, Canada: Coady International
Institute. Available at
https://coady.stfx.ca/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/ABCDEthiopiaFinalEvaluation.pdf
Willetts, J., Asker, S., Carrard, N., & Winterford, K. (2014) The practice of a strengths-based
approach to community development in the Solomon Islands. Development Studies Research,
vol.1, no.1, pp 354-367. DOI: 10.1080/21665095.2014.983275
World Health Organization, (2016) World health statistics. 2016, Monitoring health for the
SDGs, Sustainable Development Goals. World Health Organization. Geneva, Switzerland.