Health Medical Homework Help

I’m studying for my Population Health class and don’t understand how to answer this. Can you help me study?

1-Describe a specific measure of the County Health Ranking which has changed significantly over time for better or worst and why?

Answer this question with references

Health Equity Measure

I picked a measure that we know has a focus within POP health. Within the Webinar from 2018, a new release on state report highlights “what health equity is and why it matters.” We know that where you live affects your health, and for the past nine years (since 2018), the Health Rankings have helped show this. The newest feature showed that location along with race and ethnicity affects your health. Differences in health outcomes and health factors now included all three demographics on the state level. They also had a feature that helped communities identify methods to create opportunity and health for all.

The online seminar further explains, “what do we mean by health equity.” They explain it as everyone having a fair and just opportunity to be as healthy as possible. I took a minute to compare two counties in Pennsylvania when it comes to health opportunities. (Comparing counties is also a new feature in the 2018 release.) I was interested in Montgomery County and Delaware County, one of which has a county health department and one which does not (Montgomery County DOES have a county health department.) Some factors I was interested in were the ratio of providers (PCPs = 730:1 in Montgomery & 960:1 in Delaware; Dentists = 920:1 & 1,200:1; and mental health = providers: 280:1 & 340:1). After reviewing access to providers, I wondered how this could affect patients’ health equity. Are patients in Delaware county able to get appointments with providers although their rations were much higher than in Montgomery County? It leads me to ask, does a county health department affect this in any way? Rates of mammography screenings and flu vaccines were also lowering in the county without a health department, which, as we discussed, could be a correlation as public health departments do a lot of work in promoting disease prevention. By comparing the two counties, you can also see other barriers to health such as unemployment, income inequality, severe housing problems, violent crimes, and so on. All these barriers existed in higher numbers in the county without a health department.

I believe this measure of health equity can improve how and when to create county health departments, which can affect public and population health. To further acknowledge how these new measures/resources have changed over time for the better, I investigated the “take action to improve health” section within the county health ranking site. Specifically, the ”develop strategies to promote health and equity.” The site provides a facilitation guide and a companion worksheet that allows separate groups or organizations to work through the Action for Learning Guide. Take a minute to look through the four-section guide through the second reference. You will see how organizations can identify root causes, community drive solutions, and practical strategies to promote health and equity. I loved how easy it was to follow, and there were many illustrations to help convey idea.

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RACE, ETHNICITY AND LANGUAGE MEASURES: IMPROVEMENTS AND OPPORTUNITIES

For this question I was eager to dive into how the County Health Ranking model addresses variation in how race, ethnicity and language (REAL) data are gathered and reported, and how the measures of these categories are determined and updated over time. Firstly, I appreciate how health equity is invoked in multiple documents and reports, with very specific and overt commitment to addressing racial justice as part of the County Health Rankings’ purpose and value to communities. This seems like a notable change in response to the tragic inequitable burden of COVID incidence and mortality among African Americans, Native Americans, and Hispanic populations compared with white populations, and to the renewed calls for racial justice in 2020 and beyond.

I also appreciate what may be an improvement in their approach to situating the definition of race and ethnicity for the purposes of evaluating the health status of communities and identifying variations and potential health inequities through best-practice categories and analytical methodologies. For example, they note how racial and ethnic categories and identities are not biological, but are socially constructed and include the perceptions of others and how there is variation in how people are grouped and how people view themselves and others. This nuanced approach to race/ethnicity is an improvement compared with past approaches that merely reported race/ethnicity data in tables without context or explanation of the point of view generated by the reporting of such data in the first place. (See snip below, County Health Rankings, 2021).

I think a further opportunity for ongoing improvement is to pursue further disaggregation of populations categorized by County Health Ranking methodologies. Let’s take for example the race category “Asian,” which is defined as “people who identify themselves as Asian or Pacific Islander and do not identify as Hispanic” (Key Findings Report, Technical Note #6 (Links to an external site.)). There are many distinct populations and communities within this large category, and when aggregated there is a real risk of hiding significant disparities among populations needing support and prioritization. For example, in Oregon there is a significant Pacific Islander population whose health experiences are underreported and are hidden when they’re aggregated into a single “Asian” racial category, or even worse, are not collected or reported at all. In the case of COVID, this has resulted in inaccurate reporting on vaccination status and other concerns in the community (Garcia, 2021).

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