Assignment 5 Application of Theory to Practice, Presentation of Proposal

Identification of the Community

African Americans form a significant proportion of population in Maryland and the US as a whole. It is estimated that 60% of the population in America is obese. Population estimates reveal that about 29.4% of the population in Maryland comprise of the African Americans. There is a high prevalence of obesity in African Americans living in Maryland. For example, it is estimated that 38.1% of the African Americans who are living in Maryland are obese.

Furthermore, 33.6% of the African American adolescents are obese, making the state ranked 13th leading in obesity among the adolescents. The risk o obesity among African American people is high when compared to other ethnicities. This is attributed to a number of factors that include biological, behavioral, individual, community, and political factors. Biological factors include being born to a mother with gestational diabetes, ethnicity, breast feeding and birth weight.

Behavioral factors include dietary intake, physical activity, screen time, and duration of sleeping hours. Individual factors include food preferences, knowledge about food, and addictive behaviors such as eating disorders. Family factors include eating practices and family income. Lastly, community factors include built environment and food availability (Vedovato et al., 2016).

Health Resources and Environmental Conditions

The prevention of the high prevalence of obesity among African American populations is dependent on the availability and use of the existing community resources. These resources include health institutions that offer care to patients with risk of or having obesity. Health institutions can act as source of information concerning the healthy behaviors that these communities can adopt for their health and wellbeing.

The other health resource that is available in the Hyattsville in Maryland include community support groups for those with obesity and its related complications. Those at risk of affected by obesity and its complications can gain the support that they need for effective management of their condition. There is however the challenge of the existence of significant disparities in access to healthcare by African American adults with diabetes in Hyattsville.

This is attributed to significant disparities in the household income that limits the affordability of the available health services. There is also low insurance coverage among the African American populations in the region, which translate into low utilization of the existing healthcare services by them. As shown earlier, environmental factors also contribute to the high prevalence of obesity among adult patients from African American origin.

The environmental factors include the difficulty in accessing health foods and living in built environments where stereotypes is prevalent. Therefore, most of the African American adults end up making unhealthy decisions on the diets they consume, increasing their risk of obesity among them (Vedovato et al., 2016).

Description of the Agency

The agency that was visited for this project is Joslin Center Care that is located in Hyattsville in Maryland. The agency provides its populations with a wide range of services. Most of the services aim at promoting the health and wellbeing of the population. They include screening, health education, diagnosis, treatment, and referral of cases. The agency works closely with community health workers to monitor disease incidences and the needs of the surrounding communities.

It was identified during the agency visit that the most prevalent health issues that is affecting the performance of the agency were obesity and lifestyle problems among the adults from African American backgrounds. Therefore, it increased the need for the adoption of interventions that focus on ensuring that healthy lifestyles is promoted in this population to decrease the prevalence of obesity and its associated complications.

Agency Purpose and Funding

As shown earlier, the purpose of the agency is to provide services that include preventive, curative, and healthcare that promote the health of the populations it serves. It also acts as a referral center for the most critically ill patients. The curative services that it offers include treatment of the diagnosed conditions and active follow-up of cases. Some of the preventive services it offers include immunization of the vulnerable populations.

Lastly, health promotion services offered in the agency include health education to promote lifestyle and behavioral change in the population. The agency receives its funding from a number of sources. One of them is the insurance payout for the services that it offers to the patients that have medical insurance coverage. The second source of