Community and Population Health
The BSN program at WGU offered me the opportunity through The Community and Population Health
course to interact with members of my community while completed my field project. The community
offered me ways various ways to better understand the community health problems and how nurses are
able to utilize the available resources in the community to help improve the quality of the community
members. I was able to identify specific health needs of my community while conducting my research
and was able to better understand the role of community and public health professionals. My
perspective to the factors involved and the various methods of prevention in the community help to
broaden my knowledge as a professional nurse.
The community of focus for my field experience ws Waukesha County, WI. Waukesha County is located
in the South-Eastern part of Wisconsin, 15 miles west of the city of Milwaukee, 60 miles east of the city
of Madison, and 100 miles north-west of Chicago. It is included in the Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis,
WI Metropolitan Statistical Area. It is the 3rd most populated county in Wisconsin with a total of
392,690 people. The largest ethnic group being White(93.4%), followed by smaller groups of
Hispanic/Latino(4.3%) and Asian(2.7%). I found that Waukesha County has one of the lowest rates of
unemployment in the state at 5.3%. The average household income was $75, 652. Waukesha County
currently has 12.3% of the population living in poverty compared to statewide at 15.3%, with the largest
age group being under age 18. They found that African Americans and Latino/Hispanics had higher
poverty rates than any other and as the population increases the poverty rising with it.
Waukesha County is considered to be a pretty healthy community with the majority of illness affecting
the elderly and the highest incidence of death coming from heart disease. Through conducting my field
study I found that the top 3...