Purpose of Assignment

The purpose of this assignment is to involve students in the comprehensive community needs assessment. Students will develop/utilize tools to identify perceived factors (both negative and positive) that impinge on the population’s health. This information will then be used to develop and implement strategies for health promotion. 

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Student Approach to Assignment

It is important to evaluate one’s involvement in her community. This paper gave me the opportunity to reinforce my desire to exercise my nursing involvement in my community upon graduation. No matter where I live in the future, there will always be a community health need that requires resources in order to be fulfilled. We established our measurable outcomes based on the Healthy People 2020 objectives and our nursing diagnosis in order to evaluate how an educational intervention would affect the knowledge deficit in our community. The Healthy People 2020 objective that we chose was to increase the variety and consumption of both fruits and vegetables within our community. By making these fruits and vegetables more accessible through the creation of our nutritional cards, we took the first step towards meeting this goal. Hopefully, future students will oversee the distribution and further production of nutritional information for cards in the future. 

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Reason for Inclusion of the Assignment in Portfolio

I have included this project into my portfolio because it exemplifies many of the core nursing behaviors set forth and occurred within a culturally diverse environment. This project’s success depended on the involvement and collective effort of my group partners and would not have been successful without everyone’s involvement. 

Critical Thinking 

• Uses decision-making skills in making clinical or professional judgments 

  • Example: Unfortunately, our group was unable to implement our planned intervention with the Kids’ Cafe. Because of this, when our group was presented with a new intervention idea, we jumped at the opportunity. We utilized our decision making skills to draft and produce nutritional information note cards for adults and then tailored these cards to appeal to children, our original population aggregate. We used our professional and clinical judgement to include important information on the children’s nutritional cards although a format for these cards had not yet been produced. 

• Engages in creative problem solving 

  • Example: When creating the child-appropriate nutritional intervention cards, we created and implemented the child-friendly formatting ourselves. We used picture icons to depict the directions for a child of almost any age and we broke apart each recipe and direction into short, simple steps. These cards became the creative answer through which we addressed our original aggregate, but we also believe that these cards will serve another, often-overlooked population, the illiterate or minimally literate adults in our community. 

 

Nursing Practice 

• Applies appropriate knowledge of major health problems to guide nursing practice 

  • With the closing of many local grocery stores, like Farm Fresh, many parts of Norfolk have gone from having a grocery store to becoming food deserts. The local Food Bank has sought to address this problem by increasing the number of mobile food pantries that it runs. However, during our time volunteering, we students noticed that many Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) participants would hesitate or refuse to take certain fruits and vegetables with which they were unfamiliar. Because of this, our group selected the 10 fruits and vegetables and constructed our cards to teach different ways to prepare these foods. Our goal is that we can address the food insufficiency of our area by making these foods that the Food Bank makes available also more approachable and less intimidating. 

 

Communication 

• Adapts communication methods to patients with special needs 

  • Although we have referred to our nutritional information cards as “adult” and “kids” cards throughout the course of our paper, they are not labeled as such. Therefore, the language on the “kids” cards, while it was originally intended to make an impact for children at the first grade reading level, could also be given to anyone with special needs or a low literacy level. 

 

Teaching 

• Uses information technologies and other appropriate methods to communicate health promotion, risk reduction, and disease prevention across the life span 

  • We utilized available resources and research in order to provide accurate information on the fruits and vegetables featured on our food cards. The front of the card was formatted to include information on how the food item promotes health and reduces one’s risk of disease. In addition to providing the health benefits of the featured food, the card also provided nutritional label values to assist the individual in tracking daily values. By creating food cards for both children and adults, we addressed the importance of nutrition across the lifespan. 

• Evaluates the efficacy of health promotion and education modalities for use in a variety of settings with diverse populations
  • In order to construct the food cards provided, we ​conducted a survey of over 80 individuals about the information and aesthetic appeal that consumers would want to appear on their food cards. Additionally, we researched the most effective ways to impart new nutritional knowledge to diverse communities. For this reason, we decided to construct the food cards using more advanced vocabulary for the well-educated adult, but also made "kids' cards" which would work to help either a young child or an illiterate adult to prepare a simple and healthy for himself. Furthermore, we determined that these cards would be best distributed to people through the mobile pantry, at Food Bank events, and at the Food Bank itself, in both the backpack programs for school-aged children and to community centers who pick up groceries for local food kitchens or other non-profit organizations that distribute food to those in need. 

 

Research 

• Applies research-based knowledge from nursing as the basis for culturally sensitive practice

  • Example: We conducted a literature review of research about marketing strategies used to positively influence the health choices of residents in counties with high obesity rates. This research from four different nursing research articles directly impacted our decision to construct nutritional food cards as it was shown to be an effective intervention. 

• Applies research-based knowledge from the arts, humanities and sciences to complement nursing practice 

  • Example: When constructing the kids’ nutritional cards, we used pictorial anchors to describe the directions in order to suit the needs of varying range of literacy levels. Additionally, organized laterally across the back of each card, these pictorial anchors are kid-friendly and will hopefully encourage parents to cook with their children. 

• Shares research findings with colleagues

  • Example: During our end of semester presentation, we shared our research and reconstructed interventions with our classmates, professors, and Food Bank representatives through a 20 minute verbal presentation accompanied with powerpoint.

 

Leadership 

• Initiates community partnerships to establish health promotion goals and implements strategies to meet those goals 

  • We ran into some barriers while working to implement nursing interventions for the Kids’ Cafe in Diggstown. Originally, our plan was to attend the Diggstown campus throughout the fall semester to implement the interventions developed and instituted by ODU Nursing Class of 2018. Unfortunately, several barriers including miscommunications, unclear expectations, and an unyielding timeline prohibited us from meeting with the administration or the students in the community at Diggstown. Since we were unable to implement our nursing interventions at Diggstown, we worked to develop a new intervention that could be implemented through the Food Bank, which had been our main community partner during the summer semester. The Food Bank had determined a need for informative index cards describing different fruits and vegetables, their nutritional value, as well as a simple recipe so that patrons could easily prepare the foods they had received. Because our initial intent was to develop and implement interventions for children at Diggstown, we decided to make half of our fruit and vegetable cards to be age-appropriate for younger chefs-in-the-making. As a group, we worked to address our original aggregate within our new aggregate. At the end of the semester, the Food Bank was incredibly grateful for our intervention and looks forward to working with next semester’s students. 

• Organizes, manages, and evaluates the development of strategies to promote healthy communities

  • Our group conducted a survey in order to determine which of the three prepared nutritional cards​ were preferred by the majority of consumers. After tallying the votes and evaluating the reasons why participants rated each card favorably, we determined that the third prototype was the most well-received card. From this point, we used the aesthetic of this card and modified the nutritional content, recipes, and preparation instructions to make one master card. After that, we chose 10 fruits and vegetables that we had commonly seen ignored or discarded at the mobile pantries or at the Food Bank and constructed a nutritional card for each of those 10 fruits and vegetables. All members of the group contributed enormously to this huge endeavor and my contribution was taking on the format and content to be included in each of the "kids' cards" or lower literacy level cards. I helped group members to organize their thoughts and applied concepts from my teaching career to make sure that information was communicated in an age-appropriate manner. When the other members of our group completed their kids' cards, I would proofread them for formatting errors and would often insert picture anchors that would help a child or a low-literacy level adult to successfully complete the recipe. 

 

Culture 

• Articulates an understanding of how  human behavior is affected by culture, race, religion, gender, lifestyle, and age 

  • Example: Due to our acute awareness of the increase in food deserts in our community, we chose to participate with the Food Bank during many of their mobile food pantries and at their campus in downtown Norfolk. The lower socio-economic class of these participants and the removal of many of the primary grocery stores in their area necessitates a civic response by the Food Bank and other such organizations. We were honored to be a part of their efforts and worked to address the culture of the average Food Bank customer by tailoring our nutritional information cards to increase the aggregate’s familiarity with these unfamiliar fruits and vegetables.