describe a population or community and discuss the social determinants of health and health issues within your chosen population or community.

describe a population or community and discuss the social determinants of health and health issues within your chosen population or community.
Assignment 1 Community/population needs assessment Weighting 40% Format Community assessment Instructions The length of this assignment is 2000 words (+/- 10%). Use the headings in bold below. The Turnitin link is available on the unit Blackboard site under the Assessment tab. Please keep your Turnitin receipt and an electronic copy of the work as proof of completion and submission. Students are to use third person style of academic writing (no statements referring to you or I). You should use a minimum of 15 references of which at least 5 are journal articles. You can also use Government and organisational reports but make sure the sources are credible and that you understand the statistical data that is presented. References can be up to 10 years old. So, it is ok to use a couple of ‘non-academic sources’ if there are no alternatives but make sure the bulk of your information – especially the statistics come from reliable academic or government sources. Large credible organisations such as WHO or Red Cross/Red Crescent, Beyond Blue, Cancer Council, Kids Safe WA etc are also ok but make sure you evaluate your sources for their credibility. Remember to look over the marking rubrics for these assignments to ensure you have covered everything. Assignment content You are required to describe a population or community and discuss the social determinants of health and health issues within your chosen population or community. This information forms the basis of assignment 2 so start thinking about the target population and health promotion activity that you will do while you are writing assignment 1 in order to make the time spent researching more efficient. Title: State your specific population/community and health issue. Use this as a title for Turnitin submission. Choose a subgroup of one of the following populations: Pre-school aged children (not babies under 1 year old) Low socioeconomic groups Healthcare workers Introduction: You need to define your population in your introduction and provide a brief overview of the health and social issues that you will focus on in your assignment. Guide the reader to the structure and purpose of your assignment. Do not put data in the introduction save it for the body of the text. Demographics In this section you need to show that you can find and use epidemiological data (statistics) to describe your population group. Start broad by providing some data about your population in general (age, gender, location, etc) and then compare these data to the rest of Australia and/or changes over time in order to give some context and meaning to the data. This is the data that is easiest to find. Then narrow your population to a target group and provide what information you can that is specific to your group then make comparisons to the broader Australia-wide data you found earlier. You must narrow your population to a geographical area e.g. a town, city or region or state; or to a well-defined community such as an ethnic, religious or occupational group or online community. It’s important to start broad because most of your data will be Australia wide or state based and you present this with the presumption that the data is relevant to your target population. E.g. (broad population group) experience (health issue) at a rate (XXtimes) of (comparable population group or all australia). Therefore in (location) where there is a high proportion of (target population), (health issue) is expected to be a priority. Listen to the community development lectures to get ideas on how you could define your community. Make sure you compare groups using the same measurements (percentage, ratio etc) so that they can be appropriately compared. Health Issues Outline the health issues (e.g. Infectious diseases, injuries, dental, chronic diseases, environmental etc) relevant to your population. Give a broad overview and then narrow down your health issues and show the significance of a particular issue to your chosen population or sub-group of your population. You can assume that the reader has basic knowledge about your health issue so there is no need to describe the pathology/signs/symptoms etc. You may not be able to find much data about your specific location or target group but you can make logical presumptions that the broad data will apply. For example; you might have data for a specific population in Melbourne (or even Australia-wide) but not Perth. You can presume that the data for the Perth population would be similar to that found in Melbourne if the populations are similar. Social determinants of health (SDoH) Now that you have narrowed down both your population/community group and health issues to a manageable level; you need to outline the social determinants of health that relate to your target group and health issue. You should address at least three different SDoH but some of you will cover more it depends on how well you keep to the word limit and the significance of your social determinants. In this section you are trying to explain why your target population experiences your focused health issue from a social perspective. Conclusion The health issue and population will be the central part of your next assignment so they must be clearly stated in your conclusion. Please remember to focus on a health issue for which you can develop a health promotion program.