This Competency Assessment assesses the following outcome(s):
Analyze the context of public health and specialty nursing practice in relationship to ethics, equity and public health mandates.
Health Indicators
Introduction
Healthy People 2020 provides a comprehensive set of 10-year national goals and objectives for improving the health of all Americans. Healthy People 2020 contains 42 topic areas with more than 1,200 objectives. A smaller set of Healthy People 2020 objectives, called Leading Health Indicators (LHIs), have been selected to communicate high-priority health issues and actions that can be taken to address them.
Great strides have been made during the past decade. For example, life expectancy at birth increased and rates of death from coronary heart disease and stroke decreased. Nonetheless, public health challenges remain, and significant health disparities persist. As leaders in practice, nurses must continue to address ethically and socially responsible and equitable care. Read the Leading Health Indicators: Progress Update to learn about the status of each of the 26 indicators. Review epidemiologic data related to the health of your community in order to identify high-priority health issues and challenges.
In this Assignment you will provide an in-depth analysis of community-based epidemiologic data to gain an understanding of the health of your community as a whole. A review of data related to culturally and socially diverse populations and other indicators related to health will help you objectively define health problems and health trends in your community.
Healthy People 2020 emphasizes the importance of overcoming these challenges as progress is tracked over the course of the decade 2010-2020. The indicators will be used to assess the health of the nation, facilitate collaboration across sectors, and motivate action at the national, state, and community levels to improve health. You will examine and summarize relevant epidemiologic data, which covers:
- incidences and distribution of health problems of concern, and
- key indicators of the health of populations and communities.
Directions
Read the Leading Health Indicators: Progress Update to learn about the status of each of the 26 indicators. The nurse must explore this report and identify how the status of public and population health in your community parallels these findings. Write a 3-page persuasive paper (exclusive of title page and references) that addresses the criteria listed below.
- Identify two key indicators that you view as problems in your community.
- Report two observed disparities in health delivery systems and community services.
- Identify three community leaders (by position) who you can meet with to review a proposed action plan.
Community public health data may be retrieved from the annual reports and the state public health website. The following websites will also help you obtain data that is specific to your community.
American FactFinder. (n.d.). Community facts. Retrieved from http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/index.xhtml
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (2017). National Center for Health Statistics. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/
County Health Rankings. (2017). How healthy is your community? Retrieved from http://www.countyhealthrankings.org/
The Kaiser Family Foundation. (2017). State health facts. Retrieved from http://kff.org/statedata/
U.S. Census Bureau. (2017). American fact finder. Retrieved from http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/index.xhtml
Minimum Submission Requirements
- This Assessment should be a Microsoft Word (minimum 3 pages) document, in addition to the title and reference pages.
- Respond to the identified areas in a thorough manner, providing specific examples of concepts, topics, definitions, and other elements asked for in the questions. Your paper should be highly organized, logical, and focused.
- Your paper must be written in Standard English and demonstrate exceptional content, organization, style, and grammar and mechanics.
- Your paper should provide a clearly established and sustained viewpoint and purpose.
- Your writing should be well ordered, logical and unified, as well as original and insightful.
- A separate page at the end of your research paper should contain a list of references, in APA format. Use your textbook, the Library, and the internet for research.
- Be sure to cite both in-text and reference list citations where appropriate and reference all sources. Your sources and content should follow proper APA citation style. Review the APA formatting and citation style found in the Writing Center. The Writing Center can be found within the Academic Support Center under Academic Tools in the left navigation of your course. (It should include a title page, paper is double spaced, in Times New Roman 12-point font, correct citations, Standard English with no spelling or punctuation errors, and correct references at
If work submitted for this competency assessment does not meet the minimum submission requirements, it will be returned without being scored.
