Identification of a Population in Your Community Essay.

As a community of practice your task for this week is to collaborate with professionals across the health care system and with your community of practice in the discussion in order to find a gap in care or social determinant that often results in poor health care outcomes. You will begin to take the lead in advocating for and collaborating with others to improve the health care outcomes for populations at risk.Identification of a Population in Your Community Essay.

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Overview: As a community of practice, your task for this week is to collaborate with professionals across the health care system. With your community of practice, in the Discussion, find a gap in care or social determinant that often results in poor health care outcomes. You will begin to take the lead in advocating for and collaborating with others to improve the health care outcomes for populations at risk.Identification of a Population in Your Community Essay.

Practicum Discussion: During this week, you will identify a population at risk in your community. This population will be the basis for your Practicum Discussions and your individual presentations over the next 6 weeks, as well as the focus of your final PowerPoint presentation in Week 6. To review, a population is a group of individuals who share a common environmental or personal characteristic, such as obese individuals who are at risk for diabetes or cardiovascular disease (populations at risk) or those individuals who are otherwise healthy and could stay healthy if they do not develop risky behaviors (populations of interest). An example of this is teenagers who don’t yet smoke but might consider it due to peer pressure (Stanhope & Lancaster, 2020).Identification of a Population in Your Community Essay. Some of the topics you might consider are vaccination compliance, obesity rates among children and adults, teenage pregnancy, or infectious diseases such as Norwalk virus, genital warts, or sexually transmitted diseases/infections. You might look also at emerging public health problems such as Chagas or the Zika virus. Some of the places you might consider looking for information to substantiate and support your ideas about populations at risk in your communities are your local health department, the CDC, and the many evidence-based websites that the CDC supports, such as the CDC Wonder (http://wonder.cdc.gov/). You may also review the work of other community groups that focus on improving health care outcomes for your community. You should begin to support your selection of population and ideas about their health care problems through the use of health data and scholarly literature.Identification of a Population in Your Community Essay.

Please address the following points in your Practicum Discussion:

Briefly describe your community and then describe your practice setting.
What are the determinants of health in your community? (https://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/about/foundation-health-measures/Determinants-of-Health)
What are the most prevalent health problems in your community or in your practice?
Choose a population at risk and describe the health problem specific to that population. Remember that you will have to define the population’s age, culture, religious beliefs, foods, and traditions eventually as your project progresses.Identification of a Population in Your Community Essay.

The following is what I put on my practicum application for the idea for the overall idea and was approved:

The population that I have chosen to focus on are individuals suffering from substance abuse/drug addiction. I plan to focus on the counseling, medication regimen, weaning, and support that is readily available in the community. Substance abuse/drug addiction does not discriminate based on sexual orientation, race, gender, economic status, etc. This public health dilemma not only impacts the person, but also the family members and the community. The effects of substance abuse/ drug addiction contribute significantly to social, physical, mental, and public health problems.Identification of a Population in Your Community Essay.

The practicum setting is community based substance abuse/drug addiction counselor in Lexington, Ky.

This is a multilevel projeject that will span over many weeks that will build upon one another into a powerpoint at the end.

This needs to be wrote in APA th edition and the sources have to be years or less.

I have attached the over view of the entire project.

Thank you]

Identification of a Population in the Community

Briefly describe your community and then describe your practice setting.

The community has been identified as Lexington, the second largest city in the State of Kentucky. Considered the horse capital of the world, this is an urban city area that was founded in 1775. It covers an area of 283 square miles of gently rolling plateau with excellent stock farms, pastureland and fertile soils. Bluegrass thrives in the limestone that dominates the area.Identification of a Population in Your Community Essay. In addition, it is serviced by the Kentucky River that offers abundant fresh water for the city residents. The area has a population of 321,951 as revealed by census figures from 2018. The area has 230 places of worship that include synagogues, temples and mosques and churches, which represent 38 denominations. The area’s liquor laws are a minimum drinking age of 21 years with alcohol sold in licensed restaurants, bars and package stores. Crime rate in the area is below the national average with car and foot patrols by law enforcement officers helping to act as an effective crime deterrent and ensure community safety. The traditional commercial activities in the area include horses, handcrafts, tobacco and bourbon (VisitLex, 2020).Identification of a Population in Your Community Essay.

The practice setting is a community-based substance abuse and drug counseling treatment center where counseling services are offered. Substance abuse has increasingly become a concern for the area with deaths exceeding 1,000 every year. The deaths were reported at 1,248 in 2015 and 1,404 in 2016. The statistics indicate that opioids are the most commonly abused substance/drug in the city. The city health authorities recognize this concern and now requires that all first responders carry Naloxone to address opioid overdose (AddictionCenter, 2020). The services offered at the treatment center focus on integrating treatment and rehabilitation programs into social services and community health, ensuring community participation, and accountability and sustainability to the community. The goals of the treatment services are to actively involve community members and local organizations, and encouraging behavior change.Identification of a Population in Your Community Essay.

What are the determinants of health in your community?

There are two determinants of health in the Lexington community. The first determinant is policymaking that influences availability of substances that are subsequently abused. There are no clear policies to control opioids use within the health care environment. This has created opportunities for opioids abuse as members of the community can subvert the health care system to acquire opioids. The second determinant is social factors, specifically the business activities involving horses which introduces a foreign multicultural influence that impacts ideas about drugs. Interactions with foreign influences creates opportunities for the local community to acquire and use opioids (HealthyPeople.gov, 2020).Identification of a Population in Your Community Essay.

What are the most prevalent health problems in your community or in your practice?

The most prevalent health problem in the practice is opioids abuse and addiction. There is a rising number of fentanyl and heroin abuse that is matched by an increasing number of overdose incidents for these substances. Drug dealers are mixing the different forms of opioids to make them more addictive, and this changes the dose thus increasing the chance of an overdose as the amount of active ingredients is unknown. In addition, the drugs are more lethal even at low levels so that there is a high possibility death (AddictionCenter, 2020).Identification of a Population in Your Community Essay.

Choose a population at risk and describe the health problem specific to that population.

The population of interest has been identified as individuals suffering from substance abuse/drug addiction. The population has been restricted to young adults between 18 and 26 years of age as the only criteria for inclusion. The plan is to focus on the counseling, medication regimen, weaning, and support that is readily available in the community. Young adults have been identified as the population of interest because substance abuse/drug addiction does not discriminate based on demographic peculiarities such as sexual orientation, race, gender, economic status, etc. However, young adults are at high risk of substance abuse as most of them are experimenting with their lives and yet to take on serious life responsibilities. It is acknowledged that this public health concern not only impacts the person/client, but also the family members and the community. That is because resources are spent on treatment and managed with the substance abusers often engaging in criminal activities to fund the drug acquisition. Besides that, the effects of substance abuse/ drug addiction contribute significantly to social, physical, mental, and public health problems.Identification of a Population in Your Community Essay.