I need a community assessment paper on the Miami Beach location.

ANSWER

Community Needs Assessment: Miami Beach City

Community assessment is a vital tool and step in the nursing process that helps identify strengths, needs, practices, essential resources, and environmental conditions that affect community members’ wellbeing and health. The community needs assessment is relevant in nursing as nurses play a crucial role in this process. Through the community assessment, nurses form a solid foundation for establishing and determining community members’ health conditions, significant risk, causal factors, and action or appropriate mitigation strategies to promote a healthy community and promote health strategies in the community. This paper performs a community needs assessment for the Miami Beach neighborhood, zip code 33139, focuses on the prevalence of HIV and AIDS as a health issue in the community, and establishes an appropriate action plan.

Community

Miami Beach is a coastal city in Miami-Dade County in Florida, USA. It is located between the Atlantic Ocean and Biscayne Bay, with natural and man-made islands, beaches, lakes providing it a coastal and resort-like environment and climate suitable as a major tourist destination. The average population as of 2019 census in 33139 zip code neighborhood is 38,613 people, a 14% increase for 2010 census (33,139), and a 0.4% increase in the last decade (38,441). The dominant ethnic populations include the Whites (86.3%), Hispanics, Blacks (4.2%), and others (3.8%). Of the total population, 47.5% are women, 52.5% men, and the average age is 38years. The number of people between 20 years (late) and 40 years (early) is the largest with a smaller number of middle-aged adults and children under 18 years (USBS, 2020). Educational attainment of adults over 25 with a bachelor’s degree and higher is 46%, with a median household income of $37,328, an unemployment rate of 14.7%, and a poverty rate of 14.88%. Biological factors identified are that people under 65 years old in Miami Beach without health insurance are 22.3%. Moreover, prevalent diseases that result in deaths are cancer, strokes, cardiovascular diseases, unintentional injuries, Alzheimer’s disease, and HIV & AIDS.

According to Miami Matters in 33196, the AIDS incident rate is 87 cases per 100,000 population. Compared with the county rate, Miami-Dade has 14.3 cases per 100,000 population, which is higher by 84% (Miami Matters, 2019). CDC outlines 15 causes of death, showing HIV/AIDS as a causal factor with a death rate of 0.8 per 100,000 population with males leading (2.4), females (0.8), whites accounting for (0.7), blacks (6.9), and Hispanics (1.7) (CDC, 2018). Socially, due to the diversity and many foreign-born populations, a large number speaks languages other than English, including cultural differences.

Community Assessment

According to the windshield survey conducted in the area 33139 of Miami Beach City, the area is a melting pot with diverse ethnic residents. The three leading disease-related deaths are heart disease, cancer, and strokes, with environmental health-related priorities being beach water quality, UV radiations, and mosquito-borne diseases. Primary behavioral aspects include increased mental illness and autism among adults. A health outcome that presents a need to alleviate the high disease burden is the AIDS incident rate in the area. Regarding HIV/AIDS, the 87 rate is the third-highest rate in the county after the zip codes 33136 and 33137, which also shows an increasing trend since 2011 (Miami Matters, 2019). According to the CDC, males and the Black population are the most affected. Risk factors associated with this increase includes the strategic location of 33139 area in Miami Beach, as a central coastal region, open, melting pot, and tourist destination center with high drugs and substance use. The presence of residents in the area without health insurance coverage or not in care for the HIV positive status has resulted in the prevalence, as they believe the disease is a chronic illness and not a death sentence. Nevertheless, the area has numerous health and social services systems, including community centers, clinics, and home care institutions providing high quality, parental, and family care and services. There are church-based health centers (Catholic) providing clinical services, aiming to address societal issues, decreasing poverty rates, offering education and awareness, and addressing illegal immigration.

Analysis

Community Health Program/Resource 

The increasing trend of AIDS incident rate in area 33139 of the Miami Beach city is a concern requiring sufficient and comprehensive mitigation and prevention strategies as the community’s strategic location, and a preferred tourist destination increases the people’s risk factors and susceptibility. The community can benefit from the CDC Community Guide Program that develops behavioral prevention and intervention measures of high-risk factors conducted at the individual, group, and community levels (Miami Matters, 2020). The program targets men mostly, which helps address the large number of men leading to morbidity and mortality rates. Besides, it can also be adopted among women and adolescents. Preventive programs and those developed to facilitate care and provide insurance coverage will help alleviate the problem in the area.

Healthy People 2030

The CDC Community Guide Program helps meet the Healthy People 2030 objectives and goals for STI diseases by reducing the transmission, infections, and associated complications. This helps attain the overall health goals of improving access to high-quality STI care and patients’ overall wellbeing. According to Healthy People 2030, in this topic, they aim at reducing the number of HIV infections among adults and adolescents with a target of 3,000 people. Moreover, it seeks to have consistent programs that increase knowledge on HIV status, which can be addressed through the CDC Community Guide Program (Healthy People, 2020). The Healthy People acknowledges that in most cases, people with HIV will keep quiet about it, they will refuse to seek medication, will deviate from maintaining care; and people will engage in risky behaviors without extra care; these issues can be addressed through behavioral interventions as behavior change can be enabled both before and after infections.

Summary

Community members in area 33193 in the Miami Beach city are faced with high health risks and susceptibility factors due to its strategic location and orientation of the place as a famous and top tourist destination. HIV/AIDS menace is prevalent in the community, most especially among men and the Black community, followed by the White and Hispanics, the three prevalent ethnicities. Alleviating this health outcome and problem can be done through increased collaboration with diverse health agencies and the community through the CDC Community Guide Program in line with the Healthy People 2030 Initiative’s objectives and goals.

Reflection

This assignment provides a platform to effectively denote community descriptions and tracking health issues facing a specific community. While doing the assessment, I have learned that each community has unique health issues with varying intensities, risk factors, and vulnerability. For instance, in Miami-Dade County, area 33193 is highly affected by the prevalence of HIV/AIDS with high intensities than area code 33140 and other cities in the USA. This assessment equips me with advanced assessment and analysis skills to identify and determine health outcomes, which is crucial for developing successful and effective mitigation strategies to promote high-quality care, health, and well-being. As a nurse, on forward, I intend to remain informed of the health situations of people from diverse communities while operating within the objectives of the Healthy People 2030 framework, as they are inclusive, comprehensive and result-oriented.

References

CDC. (2018). Table 5. Age-adjusted death rates for selected causes of death, by sex, race, and Hispanic origin:. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/2018/005.pdf: CDC.

Healthy People. (2020). Reduce the number of new HIV infections — HIV‑01. Retrieved from Disease Prevention and Health Promotion: https://health.gov/healthypeople/objectives-and-data/browse-objectives/sexually-transmitted-infections/reduce-number-new-hiv-infections-hiv-01

Miami Matters. (2019, September). AIDS Incident Rate. Retrieved from Miami Matters: http://www.miamidadematters.org/indicators/index/view?indicatorId=157&periodId=243&localeId=414

Miami Matters. (2020). CDC COMMUNITY GUIDE: Interventions to Reduce Sexual Risk Behaviors or Increase Protective Behaviors to Prevent Acquisition of HIV in Men Who Have Sex with Men: Individual-, Group-, and Community-Level Behavioral Interventions. http://www.miamidadematters.org/promisepractice/index/view?pid=4108: Miami Matters.

USBS. (2020). Miami Beach city, Florida. Retrieved from United Status Census Bureau: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/miamibeachcityflorida/RHI325219#RHI325219