Health Planning and Community Development Approaches in Public Health

This report analyzes health planning and community development approaches within the context of public health, specifically focusing on addressing the community problem of diabetes, particularly among the Asian American population. It contrasts health planning, a top-down approach led by public health professionals, with community development, a bottom-up approach that empowers community stakeholders. The report highlights the benefits and limitations of each approach, advocating for the community development approach in this scenario due to its focus on empowerment, inclusion, and its cost-effectiveness. The report emphasizes the importance of considering community values and knowledge, alongside healthcare system support, to effectively address the public health issue of diabetes. The analysis includes the discussion of factors contributing to diabetes such as family history and obesity and methods to control diabetes such as lifestyle changes, diet modifications, and exercise.

Running head: ASSIGNMENT
ASSIGNMENT:
HEALTH PLANNING AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT APPROACHES
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author’s Note:

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Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a major public health issue on a worldwide basis.
According to Ting, Cheung and Wong (2016), current global estimation demonstrates that
about 415 million people are affected and it is estimated that the number will increase to 642
million by the end of 2040. According to the study of American Diabetes Association (2017),
the Asian American community is thought to have an increased risk of type 2 diabetes in
comparison to Hispanic white Americans. The aim of the paper is to discuss the approach that
is more appropriate for the community problem and evaluating the benefits and limitations of
the approach of King County, Seattle Washington in U.S.
Two approaches that are applied in the field of community health assessment, health
planning and community development. Ho et al. (2019) opined that health planning is a top-
down approach that supports public health professionals to make decisions about health
programs that directly affect them. On the other hand, community development uses the
bottom-up approach, where the stakeholders of the community need to take the decisions
related to health programs. Both the approaches have different strategies; however, both are
used in community health assessment and thus, used by the organisations in King County,
Seattle Washington in U.S. Hebert-Beirne et al. (2017) opined that each organisation uses
health-planning approach as per their requirement and need. The steps that are used for
community health assessment development process include:
 Establish an assessment team
 Identification and securing of the resources
 Identification and engaging of the community partners
 Collection, analysis and presentation of data
 Setting of the health priorities
 Clarification of the issue
 Setting of goals and measuring progress rate

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 Choosing the strategy
 Development of community health assessment document
 Management and sustaining the process
The community problem that has been chosen in this case is diabetes, which is
predominant in every part of the world. The two contributing factors that lead to the public
health issue include family history and obesity. Skinner et al. (2018) opined that obesity
increases the chance of developing type 2 diabetes and in the obese person, the tissue in the
fat is responsible for processing more nutrients in the body. The individual for have a family
history have a high possibility of developing gestational diabetes in case the mother has
diabetes during pregnancy (Nombo et al., 2018). On the general term, this type of diabetes is
common among Asian American, Hispanic, Pacific Islander or African American. Therefore,
it is important to develop a solution for preventing diabetes that occurs due to obesity. This
can be done by changing lifestyle and food habit. According to Khalangot et al. (2018),
patients who have type 2 diabetes need to reduce the consumption of sugar content by having
refined carbohydrates and cutting sugar from their dietary content. This will help in lowering
the insulin level as well as blood sugar level in the body. In addition to this, exercise will also
help in lowering the blood sugar level under check as it will help in increasing the sensitivity
of the insulin cells in the body as a result of which, reduce the level of insulin will be required
for controlling the blood sugar level among the population of King County, Seattle
Washington in U.S. Moreover, losing bodyweight is useful in controlling the sugar level. As
per the study of Ledwith (2020), it is widely used in public health policy, which is considered
as a central component of the population-based health promotion tactics that involve the
groups for assessing the purposes of resources required for enhancing the community health.
From the analysis of the community issues of diabetes, specifically on the Asian
American population, the community development approach must be adopted. According to

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Mtika and Kistler (2017), community development is a complete approach that based on
various principles such as empowerment, inclusion, human rights, social justice, collective
action and self-determination. This allows the stakeholders of the community to make
decisions about themselves as well as the communities and value the knowledge and vision
thriving within the community. The healthcare services of America is costly in nature;
therefore, community knowledge can be applied in some cases for treating the issue. For
example, using certain strategies for losing weight can be done without any form of
medication is stated to be a community development approach. The benefits of using this
approach are it focus on a large population, time saving and cost effective in nature. It
address the issue in a concentrated manner by not only assessing the mitigation plan of the
present but also in the future. However, there are limitations to this approach. The limitations
includes it offer stakeholders to involve in the decision-making process as a result, the
process require more time than implementing it, it do not involve modern technologies as it is
based on community knowledge as it is the cheapest method than the modern healthcare
system.
From the paper, it can be concluded that both the approaches in community
assessment is focused on improving the public issue such as health aspects. For mitigating the
issue related to diabetes, it is important to consider community development approach
because it involves offering a holistic method in addressing the issue that has turned out to be
a public health issue among the given population. Therefore, Asian American needs to use
community value, attitudes and knowledge to address it in an effective manner along with the
support of the healthcare system.

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References
American Diabetes Association. (2017). 2. Classification and diagnosis of diabetes. Diabetes
care, 40(Supplement 1), S11-S24.
Hebert-Beirne, J., Felner, J. K., Castañeda, Y., & Cohen, S. (2017). Enhancing themes and
strengths assessment: leveraging academic-led qualitative inquiry in community
health assessment to uncover roots of community health inequities. Journal of Public
Health Management and Practice, 23(4), 370-379.
Ho, H. C., Wong, M. S., Man, H. Y., Shi, Y., & Abbas, S. (2019). Neighborhood-based
subjective environmental vulnerability index for community health assessment:
Development, validation and evaluation. Science of The Total Environment, 654,
1082-1090.
Khalangot, M. D., Kovtun, V. A., Gurianov, V. G., Pysarenko, Y. M., & Kravchenko, V. I.
(2019). Evaluation of type 2 diabetes prevention through diet modification in people
with impaired glucose regulation: A population-based study. Primary care
diabetes, 13(6), 535-541.
Ledwith, M. (2020). Community development: A critical approach. Policy Press.
Mtika, M. M., & Kistler, M. (2017). Contiguous community development. Journal of Rural
Studies, 51, 83-92.
Nombo, A. P., Mwanri, A. W., Brouwer-Brolsma, E. M., Ramaiya, K. L., & Feskens, E. J.
(2018). Gestational diabetes mellitus risk score: A practical tool to predict gestational
diabetes mellitus risk in Tanzania. Diabetes research and clinical practice, 145, 130-
137.

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Skinner, A. C., Ravanbakht, S. N., Skelton, J. A., Perrin, E. M., & Armstrong, S. C. (2018).
Prevalence of obesity and severe obesity in US children, 1999–
2016. Pediatrics, 141(3), e20173459.
Ting, D. S. W., Cheung, G. C. M., & Wong, T. Y. (2016). Diabetic retinopathy: global
prevalence, major risk factors, screening practices and public health challenges: a
review. Clinical & experimental ophthalmology, 44(4), 260-277.