Vulnerable Populations: Scholarly Writing Paper

Despite efforts and goals in the United States to reduce or eliminate disparities in healthcare by 2020, significant disparities, including risk factors, access to healthcare, morbidity, and mortality, continue in vulnerable populations.  Vulnerable populations are at greater risk of developing health problems. Nursing care of vulnerable populations requires a specific set of skills for optimum effectiveness. The first step for the nurse in population-based healthcare is to understand who are vulnerable populations within his/her own community, what are the contributing factors to the vulnerability, and in what programs does the community invest to reduce the disparity. The purposes of this assignment include:

1. Inferring what vulnerable population means at the community level
2. Discriminating contributing factors that create a vulnerable group
3. Extend basic discoveries about vulnerable populations into the clinical realm

Read the following Assignment instructions carefully:

• Select one vulnerable population- Disability, Poverty & Homelessness, Teen Pregnancy, Mental Health Issues, Alcohol/Tobacco/or other Drug problems, Violence and Human Abuse. 
• Write a scholarly paper of 1000 – 1500 words and with a minimum of four non-text references
• Use Level One Headings Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusion. Within the Discussion, insert Level Two Headings (Double-spaced). See below for more information. The italicize sentences below are to help guide you.

Level One Headings

Introduction (title of your paper, not “introduction”)

Introduction paragraph- provide a brief introduction to your chosen vulnerable population

Method

• Describe how you found your information for this paper. Through library database? Google Scholar? What key search words did you use during your search (for example- ‘homeless’ ‘poverty’ ‘substance abuse’)?

Results

• After your search, did you find what you were looking for? Was there an abundance of information or a scarcity? What are your thoughts on what you found?

Discussion 

Level Two Headings

Description of the Vulnerable Population Selected

• Description of the vulnerable population selected.

Contributing Factors to the Vulnerability

• Analysis of contributing factors to the vulnerability.
• Consider the Social Determinants of Health that can lead to a population’s vulnerability.

Health Issue(s) Affecting the Vulnerable Population Selected

• Discuss one topic from the list of national targeted health topics that needs to be addressed in your selected population through wellness improvement, disease prevention, health promotion, health maintenance, and/or disease management
• Consider Healthy People 2020 and which topic and objective (on website) pertains to their current health issue.
• This topic needs to be rooted in actual data (ex: CDC Statistics).

Implications for Health Promotion and Healthcare Delivery Systems

• Discuss federal, state, local, and / or private organizations’ efforts to address the problem focusing on the primary and the secondary prevention levels.
• Describe how a nurse can implement interventions to empower and initiate change within the chosen population? Consider the various roles of a nurse– select two of the following six roles to examine: advocate, case manager, collaborator, researcher, educator, or activist

Conclusion

Summarize your findings.

***USE THIS TEMPLATE TO FORMAT YOUR PAPER!!!*** 

Submission instructions for Assignments: Submit your assignments into the proper link within Canvas (listed as ‘Vulnerable Populations Paper’).

• The assignment link in Canvas is already linked to Turnitin. Thus, your papers will automatically be scanned by Turnitin (you may include your title and reference page in your submission-  the instructor can re-scan it on their side).
• Your similarity index must be <20%. You can submit your paper up to 3 times in Turnitin before the due date.
• Do not worry if your index is high because of your reference and title page, it is ok, the instructor can go back and re-scan your paper!!
• However, if your paper shows a high similarity index on certain sections and you did not attempt to revise this (or properly cite your sources), then worry!