Neighborhood Nursing Leadership

Words: 742
Pages: 3

I am a public health nurse working in collaboration with MacArthur (Westlake) Park Neighborhood Council organization, located in Westlake, Los Angeles, California. The neighboring communities are Koreatown, Echo Park, Silver Lake, and Downtown Los Angeles near Mount Saint Mary’s University. Westlake is approximately 2.7 square miles, with about 38,000 people per square mile, making this community very dense for the county. Majority of the residents are foreign born, Latino and/or Asian, and receives an average household income of $25,000 a year. There is an average size of three people per household, with most families headed by single parents. Residents’ median age is 27 with majority of the people having less than a high school diploma (Westlake, …show more content…
“Neighborhood Councils receive public funds of $37,000 each year to support their activities. This may include creating events and programs that respond to the unique needs of their community or advocating on behalf of the issues they care about such as crime, roads and streets, the creation of safe spaces for children, gangs, and economic development.” (About Neighborhood Councils, n.d., para. 9) Together, we would hold regular meetings to address the unique needs, strengths, and resources of their community and work directly for a real change by advocating on behalf of problems that many residents may face (e.g., limited resource to health care, increased poverty). As a public health nurse, I would utilize community-oriented nursing practice by implementing the goal to prevent disease, disability, and apply the nursing process to promote, protect, and maintain health of individuals, families, and/or groups residing in Westlake. Engaging in collaborative relationships with the neighborhood council committees would help establish our primary focus to provide affordable health care in order to promote residents’ in Westlake quality of …show more content…
Many Westlake residents are uninsured, underinsured, and have unmet need for no and low cost healthcare services. In order to move more care into community settings, collaboration with various team members offering a spectrum of quality services would be essential to facilitate the community’s path to good health. Therefore, I would collaborate and coordinate events with community organizations such as, but not limited to nonprofit organizations, poverty-relief organization, and other health organizations and programs. Approximately, we would need 15 volunteers to be part of the planning committee and together, we will implement a plan of action to improve the wellbeing of our underserved community
One intervention that can be executed is the implementation of community health fair to the low-income and medically underserved population. The community health fair would take place at the community’s MacArthur (Westlake) Park from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. This location would be perfect as it accommodates thousands of people with the access to available public parking. The primary target through advertising (flyers and radio) for the community health fair would be low-income and uninsured Hispanic families, however the event would be open to the