Topic:Assessing the Next Best Step
Using the Riverbend City: Strategic Planning for Community Needs media piece you completed in this unit’s study, focus on the public health issues and challenges each character described. The community is clearly at a critical inflection point where strategic approaches should be enacted to address the community’s pressing public health challenges. But where and how should the director of the local public health department begin?
Drawing from key learnings in your readings, identify and describe three of the six approaches to planning you feel the director of the local public health department should consider. Specifically reference the community members’ concerns in your response. For each approach, provide a definition, the condition(s) for which it is best applied, and why you selected the approach.
- Include THREE academic references above 2017
- NO CONSIDERATION FOR PLAGIARISM
- APA FORMAT AND INDEX CITATION
- PLEASE WRITE FROM PUBLIC HEALTH PERSPECTIVE
- Due 7/20/22 at 10am
Instruction
As the Director of the Riverbend City Health Department you have convened the Community Action Board (comprised of several concerned citizens) to discuss the results of the Riverbend Community Health Needs Assessment. It will be your responsibility to determine next steps (in the Strategic Planning process) that will be informed by these results.
The Community Action Board meets to talk about the implementation plan. see each group below to see what they discuss. Review the Riverbend City Community Health Needs Assessment here
Riverbend City
Group1
Martin Lewis, Parent: You know what bugs me? The panhandlers in Ruby Lake are getting so much worse. It was always kind of a problem, but now when I wait for a bus I actually feel kind of unsafe. Some of those people are aggressive and seem kind of unhinged.
Ed Kowalski, Riverbend City Police Department: It’s tough. I can tell you that, on the force, we know it’s a problem. Homelessness all over Riverbend City has gotten a lot worse in the past five years, especially in Ruby Lake.
Nicole Fernandez, Health Care Representative: Well, if we want to talk about public health needs, there you go. Spiking homelessness represents a collision of a bunch of public health issues a lot of the time. The correlation between homelessness and mental health problems is very large, and we know for a fact that access to mental health care is a glaring problem in the city. Across all populations, by the way, not just among the homeless. Same thing for substance abuse- it can be a gateway to homelessness or an endemic condition within it, and either way, we again have real problems.
Group-2
Victor Maldonado, Community Activist: If we look at the Community Health Needs Assessment, the top needs all seem to pop up here. Mental health- top concern, check. Substance abuse, check. Health care access, big check.
Father Junot Rivera, Faith-Based Representative: Certainly that’s a problem among the homeless, but I think we can agree that it’s a problem throughout the neighborhood and the city. In my parish, there are very few people who feel like they have easy access to healthcare, especially preventative healthcare. And this is both among people who work and people who don’t.
Victor Maldonado, Community Activist: And the other two in the top five concerns are in the same neighborhood, thematically: programs and resources for obesity prevention, and for chronic disease. Add this up, and our citizens overwhelmingly have problems getting health care in a systematic and preventative way.
Martin Lewis, Parent: : And that’s why we need to work out how the city and county can help connect people with these services.
Group-3
Ed Kowalski, Riverbend City Police Department: Whoa, there. I think that’s way beyond our brief. I’ll grant you that these problems exist, but we’re here to enforce the laws and keep the streets clean, not to hold people’s hands into mental health care.
Father Junot Rivera, Faith-Based Representative: Come on. You know as well as the rest of us that there are real-world benefits that we would see if people in Ruby Lake had better access to mental health care, and other types of long-term medical care. Nobody’s necessarily saying that the city or county needs to provide everything, but they can certainly help empower organizations that are providing services, and reduce structural barriers, and, you know, direct people towards resources that exist. What if you provided a mental health care referral to one of the panhandlers making Martin uncomfortable? What if you, as a police officer, had phone numbers you could give to people when you see obvious chronic disease or substance abuse problems when you’re performing a welfare check?
Ed Kowalski, Riverbend City Police Department: I’m a cop, not a social worker. I want to help people, sure, but I need to spend my time protecting the community from bad guys. This social help stuff would have to be a distant second. It’s not my place to save the world, and it’s not in my power.
Bruce Greenberg, Superintendent of the Riverbend City School District: : Not on your own, sure, but all of us represent organizations or points of view that can do something to reduce barriers. Even if we can’t help everybody—and of course I know we can’t—we *can* help a lot of people in actual, concrete ways. And every single person we help makes our city a little bit better.
https://www.hennepinhealthcare.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Community-Health-Needs-Assessment.pdf
