Health Profile of a Community: Summative Assessment

Understanding of Definitions of Health and Illness and Health Promotion

You will be required to produce a health profile that examines the health and wellbeing of a family, group or community across the lifespan, which a nursing associate can use to identify opportunities for promoting health and preventing ill health.

a. What? The introduction needs to introduce the reader to the family, group or community that you have profiled. You need to give a rationale for your choice of the group (family, group or community) you have decided to profile.

b. How? This section of the introduction needs to outline how the essay will be structured.

c. Why? An introduction needs to articulate the significance of the topic to be discussed. This should make clear why you have chosen the group (community, group, family) and how the health profile illustrates factors which can impact on individuals and groups experience of health and illness.

Note: There should be a flow in the essay.

In this section define the concept of health and wellbeing, and an outline of the principles of health promotion and the importance of health promoting activity to promote good health and preventing ill health across the lifespan.

a. The health profile will form the main body of your assignment and its purpose is to explore the health status of your chosen family, group or community.  You can base your profile on your formative activity if you wish. The profile can be written in a form of a report with subtitles, and can use photographs, statistical graphs and charts to help support your discussion. Please ensure any photographs are not of individuals, and graphs and tables should be referenced.

b. Start by introducing your chosen family, group or community, proving a brief description– for example;

•For a family, make up of family, ages, where they live, employment, social class, do they rent or own house

•For a group for example is it defined by age range, ethnicity, sexuality or people with a common health issue

•For a community the geographical location of a community, the type of environment, facilities available to them

c. In your profile you need to identify key health needs of your chosen family, group or community. You should do this through the use of your own observations, and through examining epidemiological and demographic data to provide explanations for their health and wellbeing status.  The sorts of data you can use to support your discussion are as follows;

•Epidemiological data on patterns of morbidity

•National and local health reports

•Information from government and non- governmental organisations

•Articles from journals and newspapers

d. Provide commentary in your profile as to explanations of factors that may have impacted on your family, group or community across the lifespan. These include a discussion of determinants of health, behavioural risk factors and how inequalities in health are important influences on health.

e. Conclude your profile by identifying the priority areas for health promotion interventions which will prevent, protect, promote and improve the health of your group (LO 3 and 4).

In this final section you need to discuss the role of the nursing associate in promoting health and outline how your profile can be used to identify opportunities for promoting health and preventing ill health. Think how this information is important in planning health promotion activity both locally, nationally and by the individual nurse.

5. Conclusion (approximately 200 words)

Summarise the key learning points that have emerged from the health profile inclusive of any overall analysis of learning related to the topic.