Identifying and Addressing Public Health Concerns in a Local Community

Undertaking a Virtual Research Tour of the Local Health and Social Services

1. Briefly highlight what the report is about, the reason for the report, the locality you are discussing and the local public health concern you have chosen to identify specific healthcare services and review the role of the nurse in promoting health in this area.

 

2. Undertake a virtual research tour of your local health, social services, and health services to identify key areas of public health concern. 

 

a) Choose one area or locality. The local area you study in this area should be: Somewhere that interests you and/or which you are familiar with placement area or local home area) One which you can use published data to inform a discussion about social and health care needs in that area. It would be better to pick a county as your locality because you are more likely to get reliable data  If data collection is not at 90% of the population it will not be recorded in the figures and merely be left blank.

 

b) Collect and discuss social and health data about that area that you have chosen:  Finding Statistics and Information:

 

Gather insight data on ONE prevalent public health need. This data should be gathered from local joint strategic needs assessments (JSNA) around the health of your chosen population, in your chosen community and in relation to your field of nursing e.g. Childhood obesity rates if you are a child nurse, rates of mental ill health like depression or suicide if you are a mental health nurse, or rates of cancer, smoking or long-term conditions if you are an adult nurse.

 

Utilise information from reputable source using Public health England Local Authority Health Profiles (Links to an external site.)  Other sights that will support the data in your assignment could include NHS digital (Links to an external site.), Office of National statistics (Links to an external site.), and NHS England Data Catalogue. (Links to an external site.)  Identify one key health and social care issue in your chosen locality by reviewing the epidemiology and prevalence of this data, e.g. Childhood obesity rates if you are a child nurse, rates of mental ill health like depression or suicide if you are a mental health nurse, or rates of cancer, smoking or long-term conditions if you are an adult nurse.

 

Demonstrate this data in tables, graphs or pie chart and in a brief written summary. Identify your sources

 

Discuss what the data suggests about public health care need in that area and the implications for health care. Support this information with key research that may validate your findings. Within your discussion compare your findings to national and worldwide figures.

 

c) What implications can you draw from this?

 

3. Identify the determinants, inequalities and barriers to health.

Within your locality, identify the environmental, societal, and social determinants of health (like poverty, education, culture, economy, geography, and gender) that create health inequalities.

Health inequalities are unfair avoidable differences between groups of people. Look at the differences in the status of people’s health such as the life expectancy, access to care, behavioural risk factors from the data. E.g. It may be that this particular county that has higher suicide rates than the rest of the UK, find out why this might be the case. You can use publications such as the Kings Fund (Links to an external site.), NHS England (Links to an external site.), Public Health England outcomes framework (Links to an external site.), HealthKnowledge. Org (Links to an external site.), Naidoo and Wills Foundations for Health Promotion Book (chapter 2 and 3) or any other health promotion textbook to help develop your discussion. Try to really understand the determinants that have impacted to create this health inequality causing a health need in this area.

4. Review the services and health care that are available for the public health need that you have chosen .

 

a) Identify local, national policy, services, charities available for your public health concern  For example, if you have chosen rising teenage depression the services might include GP, CPFT, counselling, NHS therapy, CBT, MIND, Lifecraft, Samaritans Highlight briefly what these services provide and what the local / national guidance recommends, e.g. Cambridge and Peterborough Foundation Trust (CPFT), National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE), Public Health England (PHE), Royal College of Nursing (RCN), Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC)