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Community Assessment

Student's Name

Institutional Affiliation

Course Name and Number

Instructor's Name and Title

Assignment Due Date

Community Assessment

Resources in my community that will enable me to finish a community assessment

Community assessment identifies the strengths, resources, needs, and challenges of a

particular community. Community health needs assessment is essential in fulfilling the

patient protection and Affordable Care Act requirements (Bias et al., 2020). Essentially,

community’s assessment involves the valuation of the existing conditions in a community.

However, the community assessment process benefits significantly when there is full

participation of the community members and stakeholders. Some of the community resources

that could be important in completing my community assessment include Community Health

Volunteers (CHVs), Community Activists, community clinics, and Public health

organizations. The Community Health Volunteers act as health promoters at the community

level, and they have basic information about the needs and challenges of each household in

the community. Community Activists involve the individuals who have initially been

involved in addressing policies and issues in the community. Community clinics are also a

true reflection of the kind of problems that my community faces. By going through the health

records in the clinics, I could see the diseases frequently affecting the community members

and know how to address the problem.

Strengths and concerns

One of the significant strengths in my community is the community members'

watchfulness and engagement. The community members are always ready to engage in

activities that aim at bettering the community. As a community, we watch over health

policies and offer recommendations whenever necessary to improve our community's health

status. Another essential strength is the trust among partners. This is specifically essential to a

community's health status in preventing transmission of sexually transmitted illnesses such as

HIV/AIDS.
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Additionally, the community member's commitment to work is an additional strength.

When it comes to building the community, the community members in my neighborhood are

committed and willing to help in any way they can. However, unskilled labor due to lack of

education is a significant concern in my community. The community members are unable to

make competent decisions that could help build the community. Additionally, the high crime

rate among the youths in my neighborhood is a significant concern. Most of the community

children have no proper guidance from their guardians and are uneducated due to poverty.

Most of their time, the kids spend most of their time engaging in unlawful activities, and most

end up dead due to violence. Lack of enough resources, such as healthcare clinics, is also a

significant issue in my community. The healthcare clinics equally lack enough equipment to

provide competent services to the patients.

Barriers to implementing community health plans in my community

Ignorance among the community members is a significant barrier to implementing

community health plans in my community. The members in my community lack adequate

knowledge and information about community health plans and their importance. Lack of

participation is also another potential barrier, supported by the lack of sufficient knowledge

and information; the community members might not fully participate in implementing the

healthcare plan. Lack of adequate information among the community members about the

available healthcare services is another potential barrier (Gould et al., 2012). The members

cannot participate in implementing health plans if they do not have adequate information on

the available resources. Correspondingly, lack of adequate resources, such as a lack of health

care clinics in the community and financial support. Implementation of a health care plan

requires all the financial it could get to be functional. However, due to the high levels of

poverty in my community, there might not be enough financial resources to implement the

plan. Besides that, without enough healthcare clinics, the community members will not be
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able to receive adequate health care coverage even with the implementation of the healthcare

plan.

Ways of addressing the barriers

Some of the ways of addressing the above barriers include: Sensitizing the community

about health care plans and the importance of the community's healthcare plan to reduce

levels of ignorance among the community members. Correspondingly, encouraging the

community members to be more participative as the health care plan will also benefit them is

another way of addressing the barriers. Acquiring financial help from the government and

non-governmental organizations will be a great financial source in implementation of the

health plan. Lastly, the construction of more community health clinics and informing the

community members about all the services offered will significantly help in implementation

of the healthcare plan.

References

Bias, T., Abildso, C., & Sarkees, E. (2020). The Importance of Individual-Site and System-

Wide Community Health Needs Assessments. Frontiers in public health, 8.

Gould, S. R., Beals-Erickson, S. E., & Roberts, M. C. (2012). Gaps and barriers in services

for children in state mental health plans. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 21(5),

767-774.