Community Health Problem Identification Essay

Community Health Problem Identification Essay

 

Community Health Problem Identification: San Francisco, California

A community is socially defined as a group of people who share certain characteristics such as government, geographical location, or culture. In most cases, a community means the physical location inhabited by people. My community of choice for this health task is in San Francisco, California. This community shares physical location and governance. San Francisco is the fourth largest city in the state of California and has an estimated population of 880,000 in 2022. This city has a land area of 46.9 square miles and is majorly inhabited by two main races: whites (46%) and Asians (34%). African Americans in San Francisco are just about 6%. The Chinese (21%) form the largest Asian population in this community (World Population Review, 2022).

Health Problems and Social Determinants of Health

The primary health concerns in San Francisco are chronic non-communicable health conditions that are associated with health disparities among subpopulations (Contreras et al., 2018). Heart failure, diabetes mellitus, depression, and Alzheimer’s disease, among other chronic illnesses in adult life, are the major causes of mortality and morbidity. Among veterans and other elderly, various social determinants of health impact the rate of seeking and accessing care, such as screening services for cancers (Rivadeneira et al., 2020). The housing situation, living alone, social support, and race are some of the health determinants in San Francisco (Wray et al., 2020).

Population and Health Risks

I identified diabetes as a community health problem in this community. This chronic noncommunicable condition is one of the most common causes of mortality and morbidity among the adult population in the United States and worldwide. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the current statistics show that one in every ten Americans with diabetes are unaware of their illness. Adults diagnosed with diabetes also have other comorbidities, such as hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, chronic kidney disease, and retinopathies (CDC, 2021). The prevalence of diabetes in San Francisco is common among the black population, pregnant women diagnosed with gestational diabetes, and those individuals living below the federal poverty line (San Francisco Health Improvement Partnership, n.d.). Despite their low population, Blacks have the highest incidence of diabetes mellitus in San Francisco. The risk is about seven times higher in individuals of low socioeconomic status and nearly three times higher in post-partum women diagnosed with gestational diabetes during their antenatal period. According to the City and County of San Francisco data, over 40% of the adult population in San Francisco is also obese or overweight (n.d.). Therefore, race, pregnancy, obesity, and low socioeconomic status are the main risk factors for diabetes mellitus in the San Francisco community.

ORDER A PLAGIARISM-FREE PAPER HERE

References

CDC. (2021, June 15). Diabetes data and statistics. Cdc.Gov. https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/data/index.html

City and County of San Francisco. (n.d.). Health disparities dashboard. ..Sf.Gov. Retrieved March 2, 2022, from https://sf.gov/data/health-disparities-dashboard

Contreras, M. G., Lee, J., Shakhnazaryan, N., Shakhnazaryan, N., Salamanca, N., Creasy, K., Tuot, D., & Marquez-Magaña, L. (2018). San Francisco Health Initiative: Creating agents of change to build capacity for free clinic research. Free Clinic Research Collective, 4. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC6658099/

Rivadeneira, N. A., Hoskote, M., Le, G. M., Nguyen, T. T., Nápoles, A. M., Pasick, R. J., Sarkar, U., & Hiatt, R. A. (2020). Advancing cancer control in San Francisco: Cancer screening in under-represented populations. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 58(1), e1–e9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2019.08.024

San Francisco Health Improvement Partnership. (n.d.). Diabetes: Community Health Data. Sfhip.Org. Retrieved March 2, 2022, from http://www.sfhip.org/chna/community-health-data/diabetes/

World Population Review. (2022). San Francisco, California population 2022. Worldpopulationreview.Com. https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/san-francisco-ca-population

Wray, C. M., Vali, M., Byers, A., & Keyhani, S. (2020). Examining the association of social determinants of health with missed clinic visits in patients with heart failure in the veterans’ health administration. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 35(5), 1591–1592. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-019-05507-4

This week, you will identify a population at risk in a selected community.

A few indicators of a population would be those identified in your Community Assessment as vulnerable populations, or those at risk, for example, the homeless, adolescents, pregnant, elderly, and those with associated health problems such as diabetes, STDs, malnutrition, cancer, obesity, cardiovascular disease, lung disease, etc

To start your search and interest, you might look at your community assessment or look at the information in your local public health department websites, the CDC, (CDC Wonder databases and Healthypeople 2020, 2030) and other evidence-based websites that the CDC supports.

Address the following points:

Briefly describe the selected community and practice setting, the determinants of health, and health problems that are magnified. What population is most at risk and that you have identified. Define the population and particular issues related to health risks and problems.

The community I choose is SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA.