The Community and Population Health course offered in my BSN program at Western Governors University allowed me to interact with members of my respective communities.   Each community offered different and unique health problems for which nurses have the ability to assess and develop interventions to improve the quality of life for individual community members.  Having the ability to get out into the community and conduct research as to the specific health needs of the population gave me a better understanding of the implications of public health nursing.  This gave me a more broad perspective as to the causative factors involved and methods aimed towards preventative measures.  It was a very eye-opening experience that I believe helped shape my knowledge of nursing as a whole.

With each community comes specific health risks or problems.  The community we were assigned to work in was in South Central Los Angeles--specifically the Watts/Compton area.  These areas are primarily poverty stricken with the majority of population being of Hispanic and African-American origin.  Through research conducted both in the community and through statistical analysis, I learned that one of the more prevailing factors confronting this particular community is childhood obesity.  It was through interviewing community members, investigating resources available from the school districts, and gathering information about community programs that lead my focus to be on this subject.  Through analysis, I found the proportion of families who are affected to be staggering and it gave me a better understanding of how so many children suffer from long-term complications of this health issue.  

Once I began to focus on the community diagnosis of childhood obesity, I began to analyze the specific causes for this problem to evolve my research on this topic.  The main cause that this community faced and for most communities in general for that matter is poverty.  The vast majority of families simply cannot afford to eat more healthfully due to cost, and this caused them to buy cheap, unhealthy fast food on a consistent basis.  It is a difficult situation for these families because they often neglect their diets in order to survive, and have to use all available monies towards bills, especially housing and transportation.  Knowing this, I put together meal plans with a breakdown of what it would cost to buy healthier food options recommended from myplate.gov, so the community members could see in writing how much it would cost to feed their families versus eating fast food every day.  I also provided families with informational handouts regarding community resources for their children, that allowed them to have more exercise after school.  Taken as a whole, it was a challenging and interesting community health course that broadened my nursing knowledge.

Additionally, the Nursing Program at Western Governors University enrolled us in a course offered by the American Museum of Natural History in Genetics, Genomics, Genethics for Nursing.  This course expanded my knowledge of the fascinating new ways scientists continue to develop preventative methods to treat diseases.   They are on the forefront in mapping the human genome and are tailoring specific interventions for each person and disease.  It was fascinating to attend this course and to learn how having this information can alter a patient's treatment process and prognosis entirely.  Overall, the course enabled me to better understand of how research and the development of genetics and genomics has and will continue to affect how we practice medicine and nursing as a whole.