Community Assessment Essay

This paper will conduct a community assessment of Marion County, Indiana. Marion County is located in the heart of Indianapolis, which is the capital of the state of Indiana.   Marion County was created April 1, 1822 and was formed from Delaware New Purchase.   It was named after General Frances Marion from South Carolina in the Revolutionary War period. This assessment will address the health needs and risks of Marion County through the use of the WGU assessment forms identifying the population’s economic status, neighborhood and community safety, cultural considerations, and will assess Marion County’s disaster readiness.


Population Economic Status Assessment
Marion County’s population as of   2010 was 903,393.   The county is comprised of 403.01 square miles of land and 6.71 square miles of water (Census 2010).   The Per Capita Personal Income for 2009 was $37,911 and the poverty rate was 19.7 percent with children under 18 years of age at a poverty rate of 28.4 percent (Stats IN, 2009).   The Racial composition of the poor in Marion County as of 2009 are as follows: African American 28.9 percent, Hispanic 36.8 percent, White non-Hispanic 13.4 percent, other 20.9 percent (City-Data.com, 2009).
Marion County’s welfare rate in 2010 was 20.4 percent, of that 60 percent of individual recipients were children.   Unemployment rate for 2010 was 14.2 percent the highest in the state of Indiana (Stats IN, 2010).   Medicaid covered 18.2 percent of Marion County’s population in 2006, a 30 percent increase from 2005-2006.   For low income and uninsured residents, county-funded services through Wishard Health provided 190,650 primary care visits to Marion County’s underserved and vulnerable populations in 2005, representing almost half (48%) of all such visits.   Lack of health insurance for residents 18 years of age and older in 2005 was up 17.5 percent (CDC, 2005).   Marion County’s total population-to-PCP ratio improved to an estimated 990:1 in 2005.   In 2000, 37 percent of...