In a 5-6 page paper, identify risks of potential health problems related to infection control during a disaster or catastrophic event.
Introduction
Think about a recent or past disaster or catastrophic event that occurred in your local community. Imagine you’ve been invited to participate in your local community taskforce to address future occurrence of this type of disaster. Your first step will be putting together a paper that identifies risks of potential health problems related to infection control during the disaster.
Your team realizes that a couple of key factors come into play when we think about disease and stopping the chain of infection:
• Physical elements, such as contaminated water, air, or soil in a disaster.
• Impacted populations, especially the different characteristics and needs of people in affected communities that raise or lower risks resulting from the physical impacts.
Part of those person-centered needs will include different communication needs based on different groups of people.
Physical and biopsychosocial elements very much overlap in any kind of infection control crisis. You’ll consider both as you assess risks of infection resulting from the potential disaster you’re looking at.
Instruction
In your 5–6 page paper:
• Apply a decision-making approach to assess potential health problems and needs related to infection control risks in a disaster situation.
o The heart of your paper will be assessing the potential risks of infection, given the particular kind of potential disaster and location you’ve chosen to focus on—and the populations that would be affected.
o You’ll need to articulate not only the risks and potential needs, but the decision-making process you used to arrive at these. So articulate how you’ve applied a decision-making process.
• Apply personalized information, such as the needs of different demographic groups and environmental exposure information, in the identification of healthcare risks.
o You’ll assess specific needs of the different affected populations of the location you’ve selected.
• Integrate epidemiological and system-level aggregate data to determine healthcare outcomes and trends.
o Research the most current data about the risks and infection control related to the situation you’ve selected, and incorporate the local data to support why you’ve prioritized those risks the way you have.
• Explain needs for communicating effectively with community individuals to help them make informed choices about mitigating risk of infection.
o What will be the needs and challenges for communicating effectively with the different affected populations and communities you’ve identified, and why?
• Convey purpose, in an appropriate tone and style, incorporating supporting evidence and adhering to organizational, professional, and scholarly communication standards.
o Is your paper clear and persuasive for the different people who make up your professional audience, and does it use APA style?
