Community Assessment

The Kissimmee Community

The populations that will be subjected to the community assessment under this paper are from the City of Kissimmee in Florida. The county accommodates the famous Walt Disney, Gatorland among other tourist destinations. The city has a blend of suburban and semi-rural landscapes with many projects on house developments and shopping plazas. A majority of workers from this community are engaged in small business ventures while others engage in the vibrant tourism industry. The rate of the uninsured in this community is at 35% (Florida Hospital, Kissimmee, 2013). The community has a notably high number of homeless families.

The population within the City of Kissimmee is mainly comprised on the Hispanic community making up about 59.2% of residents noted as Hispanic or Latino (Florida Hospital, Kissimmee, 2013). Most of the residents in this community exist within the ages of 25 and 54 years cohort. The community holds highly the essence of strong community leadership as indicated by the presence of a Community Vision meant to bring people together and ensure the efficient use of resources in a way that helps solve community issues. The welfare of the elderly and the non-elderly are taken care through the Council of Aging.

Kissimmee is located in Osceola County in Florida State. This is in Central Florida which has over 1.8 million people. The unemployment rate is about 1.8%. The major challenges facing this community remain to be housing affordability. The poverty rate for the children, families, and the elderly is considered to be almost three times higher in the racial and ethnic minorities. Crime rates in this region are above the national average. Out of the residents in this region, only 20% hold a bachelor’s degree or higher.  Kissimmee has over 17000 households of which 37.4% have children below the age of 18 living with them. 47.2% of the residents are married couples while 15% households had no husband present. The unique feature of this community is the societal challenges that hinder them from achieving the level of social, physical, environmental, and spiritual well-being necessary to maintain health and quality of life (Florida Hospital, Kissimmee, 2013). 

Community Health Assessment

A community health assessment is a state, tribal or regional health assessment that seeks to establish the critical health needs and issues by conducting a systematic and comprehensive data collection and analysis of the data (CCF, 2010).  The process of the community assessment requires following a multi-sector collaboration in all phases, should comprise a proactive, broad, and diverse community engagement, ensure transparency, and offer the application of evidence-based interventions as well as allow innovative practices (Bani, 2008).

This process can also be regarded as a systematic examination of the health status for a given population carried out with an aim of identifying the key problems and assets in a community. It aims at achieving an ultimate goal geared towards coming up with strategies to deal with the community’s health needs and identified issues. 

Importance of Community Assessment

It is essential to conduct a Community Assessment as it helps create an increased understanding of the needs that exist within a community, reasons for existence and why it is necessary to address these needs. By carrying out a community assessment, the members of the community under study are presented with an opportunity to give their contribution on their needs and indicate how they influence their quality of life. The process of community engagement provides a means for community inclusion where members from different parts of the community are engaged in offering their contribution to the discussion in needs, assets and the prospective community’s response (CCF, 2010).

The community assessment offers an opportunity to map the resources found within a community. This is essential in pointing out the strengths and weaknesses within the community. This mapping of assets helps in determining the asset gaps that exist within a community. The members of the community are presented with a chance of being aware of how contribute to community’s assets. The information gathered from this process is relevant to the community organizations and help them set right their service delivery priorities (CCF, 2010). 

Collection of Information

The community assessment will gather data from two data sources; secondary and primary sources. The primary data will be gathered from the community members during the assessment process. Secondary data sources involve a review of other works that have carried out on the community by other researchers. 

For this assessment, interviews will be selected as they have been recognized to be a powerful tool for gathering community raw data. The interviews will require an unbiased moderator to unearth information from different respondents. It is expected that through this process of data collection, thoughts and perceptions of different stakeholders will be recorded and in so doing, increase the understanding of the critical issues facing the community.

The community assessment process will also include data collection through interviews and questionnaires from health care organizations offering their services to the Kissimmee Community. The questionnaire will pose questions aimed at establishing the health barriers, assets, resources, and needs within this community. The crucial stakeholder interview as well as the secondary data will be reviewed by inpatient practitioners, the community physician, and other physician leaders in the medial field. There will also be a need to take into account the internal hospital inpatient and emergency department utilization data (Florida Hospital, Kissimmee, 2013). This information will be relevant in deciding and offering recommendations on the campus-specific priorities.

Secondary data will be collected through the use of the online Health Community Network (HCN) tool. This is a customizable web-based community dashboard that was developed by the Healthy Communities Institute. The tool is important is in ensuring access to high quality data and decision support. This tool was selected due to its capabilities in offering health indicator tracking, best practice sharing, and community development. All this information will be relevant to helping improve the health and environmental sustainability of Kissimmee and the surrounding communities.

Data related to indicators for mortality, morbidity, years potential life cost, access to care issues, behavioral risk factors health screening and health conditions will be gathered. The data will be set out by race, ethnicity, and age. It will also be relevant to gather data on Healthy People 2020 targets as it provides national benchmark for the community health. This will be relevant during the analysis of the data to determine the needs for the Kissimmee Community (Florida Hospital, Kissimmee, 2013).

This paper presents a community assessment for the Kissimmee Community in Osceola County, Florida County. The community in this area is mainly composed of Hispanics accounting for over 50%. The community is faced with different society challenges that hinder the attainment of higher quality of life. Community assessment will be relevant to help determine the needs of the community and rank them according to their priority. It will also be relevant in mapping the resources within a community. Data will be collected from primary and secondary sources through means such as interview and questionnaire. 

References

Bani, I. (2008). Health Needs Assessment . Journal of Family and Community Medicine, 13-20.

Florida Hospital, Kissimmee. (2013). Community Healthy Needs Assessment. Retrieved from https://www.floridahospital.com/sites/default/files/florida_hospital_kissimmee_-_2013_chna.pdf