When writing this paper please imagine that you are involved as a masters prepared nurse in providing health related services in Paterson, NJ (direct care, administration and/or education). In order to serve, you will want to better understand the health needs/concerns of the population and to explore effective means of improvement. For the purposes of this paper, please choose as your focus one population health concern/issue relevant to Paterson, NJ.
The paper should include (please organize the paper accordingly with headers):
***A. Introduction: Introduce the population health issue/concern and provide a brief overview of your rationale for focusing on this health concern (1-3 paragraphs). You may choose to focus on a specific population group in Paterson, if not specified the assumption will be that the discussion applies to the population of Paterson as a whole. Discuss the risk and preventive factors that are associated with this health concern and the consequences of this health concern for public health. Support your discussion with evidence. The introduction may summarize some information that you discuss in greater detail further along in the paper.
B. Epidemiology: Provide and discuss relevant descriptive and analytical epidemiological data. Analyze and discuss data relationships in light of risk, causative or protective factors, comparisons over time and comparisons to other populations.
C. Benchmarks and Strategies to Address this Health Concern: Discuss relevant established benchmarks for progress in this area of health concern (may be state, national and/or international benchmarks). Discuss recommended strategies to address this health concern and the evidence supporting these recommendations. Please discuss your opinion of the relevance and cultural implications of these benchmarks and strategies to the population you are focusing on. Are there other benchmarks and/or strategies that you would propose, if so please discuss and provide a rationale.
D. Policy Action Addendum: Of the strategies to address this health care concern discussed to this point, please identify one or two strategies and discuss potential options for policy advancement that would support the strategy. Please recall that the policy advancement may be related to judicial, legislative, administrative, or regulatory policy, institutional policy or other non-governmental policy. You might ask yourself: what needs to change to better be able to engage this strategy and address this health issue, how might this relate to policy change and how would this change be made? This is an opportunity to be intellectually creative and your ideas here should be informed by, but not limited to, the methods and examples covered thus far in your coursework. Several policy advancement options should be covered. (This section should be 1-2 pages of the paper).
E. Provide a reference list and correctly cite all references in text. (at least 5 sources – should be primary sources in most cases)
***Section A has already been partially written and is included in the attachment. Please add to it as needed and build upon it to continue with the rest of the paper.
