Walden HLTH5205/HLTH6205/HLTH8205E Week 11 Discussion Latest 2024

HLTH-5205-1/HLTH-6205-1/HLTH-8205E Assessing Community Needs-Summer 2024

Week 11 Discussion

HEALTH EFFECTS ON THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT

This Discussion will be available from Day 1 through Day 7 of this week. You are required to submit your initial post by Day 3. You are encouraged to post early. Once you have submitted your initial post, start responding to your colleagues. You must begin responding to your colleagues by no later than Day 5 and should continue to interact frequently with your colleagues through Day 7. Part of what makes a discussion a discussion and not a lecture is the back and forth, in-depth, animated interaction of at least two people.

If you start a topic and find that none of your peers are responding to your post, consider what you can do to get the conversation going. Include something that would elicit further thoughts and different opinions from peers. Validate your opinions with references and links to the sources you used so that your peers can read them for themselves. See your Discussion Rubric for specific grading requirements.

In this week's readings, you are learning how policy, systems, and environmental change approaches are promising and essential to addressing health inequities; however, to be optimally effective, such changes also require strategic actions to reduce or eliminate any barriers populations experiencing health disparities face. Strategic actions can also help to avoid any negative unintended consequences of such changes.

"The neighborhoods people live in have a major impact on their health and well-being." Healthy People 2030 focuses on improving health and safety in the places where people are born, live, learn, work, play, worship, and age.

Many people in the United States live in neighborhoods with high rates of violence, unsafe air or water, and other health and safety risks. Racial/ethnic minorities and people with low incomes are more likely to live in places with these risks. In addition, some people are exposed to things at work that can harm their health, like secondhand smoke or loud noises.” (United States Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, 2020).

To encourage healthy community design, health educators can learn how to collaborate across multiple disciplines such as transportation, urban planning, architecture, and public health law. These interactions aid in the development of guidelines, support pilot projects, and educate current and future planners and public health professionals about designing healthier communities.

For this Discussion, consider the community in which you live.

RESOURCES

Be sure to review the Learning Resources before completing this activity.

Click the weekly resources link to access the resources.

WEEKLY RESOURCE

BY DAY 3

Address the following:

Evaluate the built environment of your community and post an example of and explain how your built environment affects your health (positively or negatively).

Provide recommendations of what could be added or removed from your built environment to enhance or improve your health or the health of the community.

Explain how healthy community design helps address the Social Determinants of Health.  

BY DAY 5

Remember to begin interacting with your colleagues in the Discussion and continue engaging through Day 7 by responding to one or more colleagues by providing an additional recommendation and/or policy that could enhance or improve your colleague's built environment.

Support your work with specific citations from this week's Learning Resources and additional scholarly sources as appropriate.

Return to this Discussion in a few days to read the responses to your initial posting. Note what you have learned and/or any insights you have gained as a result of the comments your colleagues made.