question archive Post #1 The thing I found most impressive while i was doing my community assessment was to realize how old and deteriorated the homes in the community down the street from me where, the fact that the houses were built in the 50's and that there were some homes that had been affected by hurricanes and other natural disasters and were half destroyed and still, people lived in them
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Post #1
The thing I found most impressive while i was doing my community assessment was to realize how old and deteriorated the homes in the community down the street from me where, the fact that the houses were built in the 50's and that there were some homes that had been affected by hurricanes and other natural disasters and were half destroyed and still, people lived in them. There were lots of homeless people who I had not realized were there, sleeping in the bus stops and outside some stores, most of the houses were hoarded with items and some trash.
It was surprising that I have always been working and going from point A to point B and i had never taken the time to assess and watch my surrounding neighborhoods.
Now, more than ever I realize the role of the community nurse in helping the society. Finding resources is imperative to the development and sustainability of the community,
As an ER nurse it is the most stressful thing, situating people, finding resources, i truly admire the work our social workers and care coordinators make, it makes a huge difference.
Post #2
Many pieces of important data were collected during the community assessment that was completed in week two. I will start with the piece of information that was most surprising. The information that is so surprising was not seeing any form of public transportation other than school buses for children. This leaves the rest of the population struggling if they need rides somewhere. I think a really wonderful idea for spring hill would be to research resources for transportation, especially for the older people living in Spring Hill, KS. Many of the older adults in the community probably rely on their family members to take them important places such as the pharmacy, grocery store and doctors' appointments. When family members are not available, they might resort to avoiding health concerns and ordering food from a restaurant. This can lead to even worse health outcomes. The data point that was most important from the information collected in my opinion was the fact that the rural area still has a hospital around ten minutes away. This could mean life or death in emergency situations.
Response to post 1:
Thank you for your post, I do agree that we don’t pay as much attention to our surroundings and that sometimes we might not see the magnitude of the issues that affect our communities, in particular people experiencing homelessness (PEH) includes a broader spectrum of the population that I initially would’ve imagined. The US Department of Health and Human Services also includes in this term people whose living accommodations include transitional housing, like tents, personal vehicles, or motels).
This is important because in states with large populations of PEH there has been an increase in several diseases, including communicable diseases like HCV, HAV, or COVID-19, either because of the inadequate access to resting places or lack of access to adequate healthcare that could also condition pressure injuries, dermatitis or even promote the spread of diseases that are typically not found in the US, like typhus (Liu et al., 2020). Another important aspect of healthcare that is impacted by PEH is mental illness and substance abuse, in this population, the acute and severe conditions of stress may exacerbate underlying psychopathologies or cause mood disorders like depression (Liu et al., 2020).
Response to post 2:
Thank you for your post, I’d like to add to the discussion about public transportation; the elderly might indeed need to rely on family members, friends, or neighbors to transport them to their appointments, however, this same lack of transportation predisposes the elderly population to other diseases because it is linked with the cardiovascular risk of the community (Patterson et al., 2019). In particular, a meta-analysis by Patterson et al. (2019) showed that public transportation was associated with both lower adiposity and a slightly lower BMI (of around -0.3 kg/m2), therefore, besides increasing access to healthcare and promoting autonomy from others, the ability to use public transportation might benefit the community by lowering slightly their BMI.
Another aspect that could be explored in the elderly population, is that they may experience increased loneliness, this was assessed by Matsuda et al (2019), and their study showed that the use of public transportation was associated with less self-reported loneliness through the UCLA Loneliness scale and concluded that the use of public transportation might help prevent it, particularly in the population that stopped driving.