A1. The Affordable Care Act holds a provision that hospital systems complete a community health assessment and consequently, develop a strategy to address community health needs. Drawing on Mason et al. Chapters 11 and 77, what potential do you feel this holds to improve community health and how might this relate to nursings’ role – please give one specific hypothetical example (one paragraph). Please cite the textbook.

A2. Epidemiological and demographic data can tell us much about the reality of a community. Based on a review/use of the epidemiology resources listed, please describe one health reality that you were not previously aware of that became apparent to you from reviewing data found in a source given in the following list (please provide the data and cite the source, including URL). Then briefly propose one possible policy intervention to address this health issue that you would be interested in learning more about (one paragraph).

International Health Statistics ( World Health Organization): http://www.who.int/gho/publications/world_health_statistics/2016/en/

National Center for Health Statistics: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/

                Fast Stats: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/

                CDC Wonder: http://wonder.cdc.gov/WelcomeT.html

    State and Territorial Data:  http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/state-and-territorial-data.htm

Environmental Public Health Tracking (CDC): http://ephtracking.cdc.gov/showHome.action

Toxic Release Inventory: http://www.epa.gov/toxics-release-inventory-tri-program

EPA data: overview of sources: http://developer.epa.gov/category/data/

Environmental Justice Mapping: http://www.epa.gov/ejscreen

Robert Wood Johnson County Health Rankings: http://www.countyhealthrankings.org/

NJ State Health Assessment Data (NJ SHAD): http://www4.state.nj.us/dhss-shad/home

NJ SHAD Community Health Assessment Data:* Much of the data is on a county level. To access a municipality such as Paterson, NJ, select county then specify municipality ( in step 6 of query)  https://www26.state.nj.us/doh-shad/query/builder/mort/InjMortStateICD10/AgeDeath.html

**you will likely need to take some time to explore the SHAD sites to find the data you want. There are many resources here. Please don’t shy away from using the custom data set query.

NJ SHAD Mortality rates for Municipalities (including Paterson): https://www26.state.nj.us/doh-shad/query/builder/mort/MortMuniICD10/CrudeRate.html

NJ SHAD homepage http://www.state.nj.us/health/chs/njshad/index.shtml

NJ Healthy People 2020 – Benchmarks and Data: http://www.state.nj.us/health/chs/hnj2020/

NJ Cancer Registry: http://www.state.nj.us/health/ces/njscr.shtml

US Census: http://www.census.gov/#

NJ Center for Health Statistics:

http://www.state.nj.us/health/chs/