Chap. 5 – Community Health Events

Your assignment is to use google news or another search engine to identify at least five community health events being organized in a community. You might explore something that is scheduled at Good Samaritan Hospital or another health center, a community health screening, a marathon or 5K run, a blood drive, or another ‘community event’. Please identify the event, the date, the purpose, and location.

Chap. 5 – The Fat Plateau

Please review the news article in the January 23rd edition of The Economist magazine. This editorial / news article discusses community health in respect to an overweight, obese America. Several statistics are cited, as well as a quote by the U.S. Health Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, formerly of Kansas, that “fighting obe4sity is at the heart” of health reform. This editorial criticizes schools for not doing as much as they could, yet preaching a “pro vegetable” message. Please read the article as well as three blog entries at the bottom of the article. Please identify your personal reaction to the article – are you in agreement or in disagreement, and three reasons why.

(Chap.5)How Could A Company Promote Health & Wellness?

Below is a brief outline of some of the material presented in Chapter 5 of the text, Community Health. Imagine your school was similar to a corporation, company or business. Use the outline to identify at least ten ways your school could promote health and wellness among students and staff. You can also review the ideas presented at the “Wellness Proposals” Website.
IV. Health Promotion Programming

A. Health promotion programming can trace its roots to the 1979 Surgeon General’s Report on Health, Promotion, and Disease Prevention.

B. Basic understanding of program planning involves understanding that:

1. Health education is any combination of planned learning experiences based on sound theories that provide individuals, groups, and communities the opportunity to acquire information and the skills to make quality health decisions.

2. Health promotion is any planned combination of educational, political, environmental, regulatory, or organizational mechanisms that support actions and conditions of living conducive to the health of individuals groups or communities.

3. Program planning is a process in which an intervention is planned to help meet the needs of a priority population.

V. Creating a Health Promotion Program

A. Experienced program planners use models to guide their work.

1. Prior to undertaking program planning it is important to understand the community and to engage the priority population.

2. The priority population is the population the program is intended to serve.

B. Assessing the needs of the priority population is the first task in creating a
health promotion/disease prevention program.

1. Step 1 is determining the purpose and scope of the needs
assessment.

2. Step 2 is gathering data.

3. Step 3 is analyzing the data collected.

4. Step 4 is identifying the factors linked to the health problem.

5. Step 5 is identifying the program focus.

6. Step 6 is validating the prioritized need.

C. Setting appropriate goals and objectives

1. Goals are future events toward which a committed endeavor is directed.

2. Objectives are the specific, measurable, and observable steps to reach the goals.

D. Creating an intervention that is specific to the peculiarities of the setting.

E. Implementing the intervention is the actual carrying out or putting into practice of the activities that make up the intervention.

F. Evaluating the results is comparing the program’s outcome with some standard of acceptability that was noted in the goals and objectives. The process involves five steps:

a. Planning the evaluation

b. Collecting the data

c. Analyzing the data

d. Reporting the results

e. Applying the results

Will Two Hospitals Promote Community Health?

Your assignment is present two sides of the issue regarding whether Kearney, Nebraska should have two hospitals. At least 20 doctors in the Kearney area have proposed building a second hosptial near Yanney Park In Kearney. The Kearney City Council recently tabled approval of rezoning this area for a hospital. A Nebraska state senator has proposed a bill in the legislature to ban the building of new hospitals in Nebraska for at least two years. Proponents have argued that a second hospital will provide competition and better health care. Opponent have argued that a second hospital will deteriorate the present quality of health care. Please search for news articles at the Kearney Hub site (within ‘archives) or on google news. Please state your honest reaction / opinion / response to whether a second hospital should be built. Your response should be at leasst seven sentences with reasons for or against.

Organizing Community Health (Chap. 5)

Imagine you are living in a community that has a group attempting to organize an effort to change the local laws about smoking in public places. The goal of the group is to enforce a “NO SMOKING IN PUBLIC PLACES” policy.
Your assignment is to state the opinion / viewpoint (one complete sentence each) of each of the following people in your community: Avid smoker; A retailer who sells tobacco in his/her store; a restaurant owner; a tobacco farmer, a health educator, parents with two pre-school children; a middle age man attempting to stop his smoking habit.

World Health Organization (Chap. 2)

Your assignment is to explore the World Health Organization web site. WHO is the world’s best known international agency that attempts to promote and protect community health on a global basis. Once you are at the site, click on “Health Topics” on the upper left side of the site. Choose three health topics of your interest and summarize each topic with at least two things WHO is attempting to do, promoting / protecting community health on a global basis.

Community Health (Chap 2) Quasi-Governmental Agencies

Your assignment is to research at least six ‘quasi governmental health agencies, and discuss the purpose / function / role for each. Please have at least two sentences for each agency.
Quasi-governmental Health Organizations

A. Quasi-governmental health agencies receive funding from both public and private sources, and carry out functions expected of government agencies without government supervision.

B. The American Red Cross is the best-known example of a quasi-governmental health organization.

C. There are similar agencies in many foreign countries.

D. Other quasi-government organizations:

1. National Science Foundation

2. National Academy of Sciences

IV. Nongovernmental Health Agencies

A. Nongovernmental health agencies are funded by private contributions and grants and are not headed by government officials.

B. Voluntary health agencies are health organizations that were started by concerned citizens who saw a community health need not being met by any government agency.

1. Voluntary health organizations often have national, state, and local offices.

2. Among the best known are the American Cancer Society, the American Health Association, and the American Lung Association.

3. Voluntary health agencies usually operate under a voluntary board of directors who hire a paid executive director, who in turn directs a paid staff and a group of volunteers.

4. The purposes of most voluntary health agencies are to raise money for research, educate the public, and provide services to those in need, and advocate for their cause.

C. Professional health organizations/associations are funded by membership dues and serve to protect and promote the standards of the profession. Examples include the American Medical Association and the American Nursing Association.

D. Philanthropic foundations provide money for projects and research to benefit society, much of it directed toward improving health. Examples are the Rockefeller Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Sloan-Kettering Foundation, and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

E. Service organizations, such as the Shriners, Kiwanis, and Lion’s clubs, and religious groups often contribute significant health services to the community.

F. Corporations affect the community’s health through health and benefits packages, health and safety education programs, and worksite fitness and recreation programs.

Community Health (Chapter 5) Intro

CHAPTER 5 OUTLINE #1 – Edited assignment from CCC’s Blackboard. Please review the outline as you read chapter 1. In the comments below, please summarize in at least five sentences why communities need to make a concerted effort to being organized when focusing on a health need.

I. Introduction
A. Little in the way of community health can be achieved unless the community health professional understands the dynamics of organizing and building a community.
B. Among the most important skills is the ability to organize a community and to plan a health promotion program.

II. Community Organizing/Building

A. Community organizing is a process through which communities are helped to identify common problems or goals, mobilize resources, and in other ways develop and implement strategies for reaching their goals.

B. “Community organizing is not a science, but the art of consensus building within a democratic process.”

C. In recent years, the need to organize communities seems to have increased, since it is not uncommon for people to be unfamiliar with their neighbors.

D. There are seven assumptions for community organization.

1. Communities of people can develop capacity to deal with their own problems.

2. People want to change and can change.

3. People should participate in making, adjusting, or controlling the major changes taking place in their communities.

4. Changes in community living that are self-imposed or self-developed have a meaning and permanence that imposed changes do not have.

5. A “holistic approach”’ can deal successfully with problems with which a “fragmented approach” cannot cope.

6. Democracy requires cooperative participation and action in the affairs of the community, and people must learn the skills that make this possible.

7. Frequently, communities of people need help in organizing to deal with their needs, just as many individuals require help in coping with their individual problems.

Community Health Failure in Haiti

David Brooks, writing in the NYT:

On Oct. 17, 1989, a major earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 struck the Bay Area in Northern California. Sixty-three people were killed. This week, a major earthquake, also measuring a magnitude of 7.0, struck near Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The Red Cross estimates that between 45,000 and 50,000 people have died.

This is not a natural disaster story. This is a poverty story. It’s a story about poorly constructed buildings, bad infrastructure and terrible public services. On Thursday, President Obama told the people of Haiti: “You will not be forsaken; you will not be forgotten.” If he is going to remain faithful to that vow then he is going to have to use this tragedy as an occasion to rethink our approach to global poverty. He’s going to have to acknowledge a few difficult truths.

Here are the four hard things Brooks identifies: (1) we don’t know how to use aid to reduce poverty; (2) micro-aid is vital but insufficient; (3) it is time to put the thorny issue of culture at the center of efforts to tackle global poverty; (4) it’s time to promote locally led paternalism.

ASSIGNMENT – Please respond with at least two sentences each to the four points made by Mr. Brooks of the NY Times regarding the failure of public health in Haiti.

Community Health Issues in Haiti

Please use one or more news search engines (CNN, ABC News, Google News) to explore the health crisis in Haiti, due to the earthquake. Please use the information / terms discussed in chapter 1 of the class, and identify at least ten community health problems the nation of Haiti is experiencing as a nation. You may discuss public health, governmental actions, agencies trying to help, any problems / hurdles that will prevent immediate health to the citizens of Haiti. Please use complete sentences and cite at least three web sites you review.