Health needs assessment for diabetic children

¶ … patients and public in conducting the health needs assessment of diabetes in children. How the community can participate and what is the benefit of their participation. Here there should be an argumentation with referencing to 2 authors point-of-views.

The first step to ensure that patients and the public are involved in the needs assessment is to create a public relations, marketing, and communications strategy. Based on what we have learned about the demographics of the community, we can follow lifestyle habits and trends that will inform ways that we introduce information to the public such as targeted advertisements or flyers. The second step is to plan the nature of the involvement. As Israel & Ilvento (1995) point out, "needs assessment is a tool that helps a community plan for and implement strategies in areas as diverse as crime watch programs, business expansion efforts, and youth recreation."

What kind of activities or events would work best in this community? For example, a free public concert can help bring the community together and expose them to the needs assessment concept. We can use the free concert to gain attention to the problem of childhood diabetes in the community. The nature of the concert would be determined by the community demographics. Community members can participate in direct ways, such as volunteering their services in interview work; or in indirect ways such as donations from individuals and businesses. The participatory method promotes dialogue and is generally beneficial for all stakeholders (Wang & Burris, 1997).

2. What are the dilemmas in health needs assessment for diabetic children.

The dilemmas in health needs assessment for diabetic children will occasionally relate to ethics because the target community is minors. It might be difficult to get parents to participate in issues that ultimately help their children, and will take quite some time to build trust in the community. Therefore, one of the dilemmas is related to how to address the problem from the perspective of parents, remaining sensitive to their needs. This dilemma is compounded given racial, ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity. The needs assessment strategy has to be one that is inclusive, and therefore the team working on the needs assessment should be as diverse as possible to represent the demographics in the target community.

Another dilemma in the health needs assessment for diabetic children is coordination of efforts. There are several different social institutions identified as stakeholders, Schools are involved, as are health care organizations and local businesses Coordinating these groups can be tricky and time consuming. Finally, cost is a big dilemma in the needs assessment.

3. A discussion of how the design of the needs assessment would influence implementation. (our design is to collect the epidemiological data from available record system, conducting the survey, interviewing patients and policy makers and conducting focus group meetings). We will find the extent of the problem (diabetes) through these methods. So, this part of the essay is discuss how this design of the needs assessment would influence implementation.(this part is 1/3 of this paper)