Consider Yourself Enrolled in My Abbreviated (FREE) MPH Lecture Series

So as I get ready to dive into the field and work with a COMPLETELY NEW population, in a foreign city I decided that I should arm myself with the necessary tools/skills/information.


In an earlier post I showed you all the COPC cycle.  Before someone jumps into creating and launching an intervention it is important to do a through series of scans to learn about the community, determine what (if any) problems exist and explore the environment.  Without this information, the intervention will probably never take flight.  As a result, a series of profiles/analyses are created:

• Community profile
• Epidemiology profile
• Environmental scan
• Policy analysis
• Prevention and community health analysis
• Cultural/global analysis

Now this may seem very academic (and yes this was the format of my 208 paper), but it really helps to pave the way for a successful intervention.  Some professionals may see this extra work as a waste of time and/or resources, but in the end this extra information can make or break your case. 

So you are probably thinking, "Okay, great Emily, but why should we care?"

Here is where the lecture series begins.  Over the next few days/weeks I am going to start to pull all this information together which will hopefully give all of us a more accurate description of the community I am serving.  It will also give me the opportunity to take another crack at the government databases and create a reference for myself as I move forward.  Also ALL THE NEW CENSUS DATA IS STARTING TO COME OUT WHICH IS SUPER EXCITING!!!!  Okay, public health/geek out over!  

But in all seriousness, the up to date data is a god sent because most of the data public health professionals have been using is ten years old.  The new information will allow government and non-government agencies to have a better idea of the communities they are serving.  They will also be able to see if resources are being distributed correctly - if not they will be able to funnel that money into areas/programs that will be more effective.