Community Assessment and Analysis Presentation guide
A two-part GCU RN-to-BSN assignment: a direct community assessment using the Functional Health Patterns Community Assessment Guide plus an interview with a community or public health provider, then a 15-20 slide PowerPoint describing the community, summarising the assessment and interview, and identifying a health promotion opportunity.
Editorial process
Last reviewed · August 12, 2026
How do individual health patterns become a community assessment?
The conceptual move this assignment asks for is easy to miss and it decides everything: Functional Health Patterns is an individual assessment framework being applied to a community. Gordon's patterns were written to organise data about one person — their nutrition, their sleep, their coping, their values — and the assignment hands you a version that asks the same questions of a neighbourhood. That translation is the work. "Value and belief pattern" for a person means their own beliefs; for a community it means predominant ethnic and spiritual groups, whether health promotion is visibly valued, and what the community spends money on. Students who have not made the shift produce a windshield survey with the FHP headings pasted on top, and the assessment reads as description rather than as assessment. Before you collect anything, write one line per pattern saying what it would mean for a neighbourhood, and the data you need becomes obvious.
The assignment has two deliverables with separate submission routes, and the routing is graded. The Provider Interview Acknowledgement Form goes into its own drop box; the interview questions and the key findings from the interview go in with the presentation itself, and the two are marked separately. Complete the form before conducting the interview, as the brief says, because it exists to document consent and a form signed afterwards documents something else entirely. Plan the interview around the two specific things the presentation will need from it — the provider's role in the community, and the health issues the community faces — rather than treating it as a general conversation that you will summarise afterwards. Write the questions first and keep them, because they are part of what you hand in and an assessor can see whether they were designed or improvised on the day.
One line in the brief is the hinge to the next assignment and it is worth writing carefully: identify an issue that is lacking or an opportunity for health promotion. This is the item that feeds the Community Teaching Plan, so the issue you choose here becomes the topic you will build a teaching proposal around. Pick something the assessment data actually supports, that a nurse could address through teaching, and that a real community setting would agree to host. All three conditions matter, and the third is the one that catches people out. Choosing a large structural problem — housing, unemployment — produces an impressive slide and an impossible follow-on assignment. Choosing a screening gap, a nutrition pattern or an immunisation shortfall gives you something the next assignment can work with, and the assessment data you have just gathered is what makes the choice defensible rather than arbitrary.
Likely learning objectives
Inferred from the brief — check these against your own rubric.
- 01Translate an individual assessment framework to a population level.
- 02Design interview questions that serve two specific presentation requirements.
- 03Distinguish community assessment from community description.
- 04Identify social determinants of health from observed and retrieved community data.
- 05Choose a health promotion opportunity that a teaching intervention could plausibly address.
Read the full question
Review every instruction before using the planning guidance that follows.
Course-wide instructions that accompany this question
Important information for writing discussion questions and participation Hi Class, Please read through the following information on writing a Discussion question response and participation posts. Contact me if you have any questions. Important information on Writing a Discussion Question Your response needs to be a minimum of 150 words (not including your list of references) There needs to be at least TWO references with ONE being a peer reviewed professional journal article. Include in-text citations in your response Do not include quotes—instead summarize and paraphrase the information Follow APA-7th edition Points will be deducted if the above is not followed Participation –replies to your classmates or instructor A minimum of 6 responses per week, on at least 3 days of the week. Each response needs at least ONE reference with citations—best if it is a peer reviewed journal article Each response needs to be at least 75 words in length (does not include your list of references) Responses need to be substantive by bringing information to the discussion or further enhance the discussion. Responses of “I agree” or “great post” does not count for the word count. Follow APA 7th edition Points will be deducted if the above is not followed Remember to use and follow APA-7th edition for all weekly assignments, discussion questions, and participation points. Here are some helpful links Student paper example Citing Sources The Writing Center is a great resource Welcome to class Hello class and welcome to the class and I will be your instructor for this course. This is a -week course and requires a lot of time commitment, organization, and a high level of dedication. Please use the class syllabus to guide you through all the assignments required for the course. I have also attached the classroom policies to this announcement to know your expectations for this course. Please review this document carefully and ask me any questions if you do. You could email me at any time or send me a message via the “message” icon in halo if you need to contact me. I check my email regularly, so you should get a response within 24 hours. If you have not heard from me within 24 hours and need to contact me urgently, please send a follow up text to. I strongly encourage that you do not wait until the very last minute to complete your assignments. Your assignments in weeks 4 and 5 require early planning as you would need to present a teaching plan and interview a community health provider. I advise you look at the requirements for these assignments at the beginning of the course and plan accordingly. I have posted the YouTube link that explains all the class assignments in detail. It is required that you watch this 32-minute video as the assignments from week 3 through 5 require that you follow the instructions to the letter to succeed. Failure to complete these assignments according to instructions might lead to a zero. After watching the video, please schedule a one-on-one with me to discuss your topic for your project by the second week of class. Use this link to schedule a 15-minute session. Please, call me at the time of your appointment on my number. Please note that I will NOT call you. Please, be advised I do NOT accept any assignments by email. If you are having technical issues with uploading an assignment, contact the technical department and inform me of the issue. If you have any issues that would prevent you from getting your assignments to me by the deadline, please inform me to request a possible extension. Note that working fulltime or overtime is no excuse for late assignments. There is a 5%-point deduction for every day your assignment is late. This only applies to approved extensions. Late assignments will not be accepted. If you think you would be needing accommodations due to any reasons, please contact the appropriate department to request accommodations. Plagiarism is highly prohibited. Please ensure you are citing your sources correctly using APA 7th edition. All assignments including discussion posts should be formatted in APA with the appropriate spacing, font, margin, and indents. Any papers not well formatted would be returned back to you, hence, I advise you review APA formatting style. I have attached a sample paper in APA format and will also post sample discussion responses in subsequent announcements. Your initial discussion post should be a minimum of 200 words and response posts should be a minimum of 150 words. Be advised that I grade based on quality and not necessarily the number of words you post. A minimum of TWO references should be used for your initial post. For your response post, you do not need references as personal experiences would count as response posts. If you however cite anything from the literature for your response post, it is required that you cite your reference. You should include a minimum of THREE references for papers in this course. Please note that references should be no more than 5 years old except recommended as a resource for the class. Furthermore, for each discussion board question, you need ONE initial substantive response and TWO substantive responses to either your classmates or your instructor for a total of THREE responses. There are TWO discussion questions each week, hence, you need a total minimum of SIX discussion posts for each week. I usually post a discussion question each week. You could also respond to these as it would count towards your required SIX discussion posts for the week. I understand this is a lot of information to cover in 5 weeks, however, the Bible says in Philippians 4:13 that we can do all things through Christ that strengthens us. Even in times like this, we are encouraged by God’s word that we have that ability in us to succeed with His strength. I pray that each and every one of you receives strength for this course and life generally as we navigate through this pandemic that is shaking our world today. Relax and enjoy the course!
Turn the brief into deliverables
- 01A direct assessment of a community using the Functional Health Patterns Community Assessment Guide.
- 02An interview with a community health or public health provider about their role and the community's health issues.
- 03The completed Provider Interview Acknowledgement Form, submitted separately in its own drop box.
- 04The interview questions and key findings, submitted with the presentation.
- 05A PowerPoint presentation of 15-20 slides, excluding title and reference slides.
- 06Description of the community and its boundaries, including identified social determinants of health.
- 07Summary of the community assessment covering funding sources and partnerships.
- 08Summary of the provider interview, an identified health promotion opportunity, and a conclusion with your impressions of the community's general health.
- 09Submission to LopesWrite.
The interview, then 15-20 slides that build to one opportunity
Select the community and set boundaries
Define the community geographically and demographically, and state why those boundaries are the right ones.
Work the Functional Health Patterns
Address each pattern with community-level data, comparing at least one health problem to a credible statistic.
Design and conduct the interview
Write questions covering the provider's role and the community's health issues; complete the acknowledgement form first.
Funding sources and partnerships
Identify who pays for community health services here and which organisations work together.
Identify the opportunity
Name one health promotion gap the assessment data supports, sized for a teaching intervention.
Build the deck
Fifteen to twenty slides: community, assessment, interview, opportunity, conclusion, with impressions of general health.
Where community-level health data can be found
Recommended databases
- US Census Bureau
- County health department reports
- Healthy People 2030
- NCBI Bookshelf
Search sequence
- 1.Gather the observable data first, since the assessment is meant to be direct rather than desk-based.
- 2.Retrieve county-level statistics for the one health problem you intend to compare, so the comparison is real.
- 3.Check what community partnerships and funding streams already exist before the interview, and ask the provider about them.
- 4.Choose the health promotion opportunity last, once the data can support it.
Reference shortlist
These are authoritative starting points, not a ready-made bibliography. A qualified reviewer must confirm that each source fits the assignment and supports the claim beside which it is cited.
Nothing here is cleared for citation until you have read it.
- 01
Social Determinants of Health
Healthy People 2030, odphp.health.gov · 2024
The five-domain framework the brief asks you to identify against, and the source of the vocabulary an assessor will be looking for.
- 02
Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity
National Academies, NCBI Bookshelf · 2017
How community-level conditions produce health outcomes — the reasoning that turns your observations into an assessment rather than a description.
- 03
Public health interventions: Applications for nursing practice (The Wheel Manual)
Minnesota Department of Health · 2019
A structured vocabulary for what community health providers actually do, useful when drafting the interview questions about the provider's role.
- 04
Food Security in the U.S.
USDA Economic Research Service · 2025
Measured indicators for the nutrition and metabolic pattern, which is one of the FHP sections hardest to populate with real community data.
Review before submission
Common mistakes
- Applying the Functional Health Patterns headings to a community without translating what each pattern means at population level.
- Producing a description of the neighbourhood instead of an assessment against the framework.
- Completing the Provider Interview Acknowledgement Form after the interview rather than before it.
- Submitting the acknowledgement form with the presentation instead of in its own drop box.
- Treating the interview as a general conversation, so it does not answer the two questions the presentation needs.
- Omitting funding sources and partnerships, which the brief names explicitly and which are easy to forget.
- Choosing a health promotion opportunity too large for the Community Teaching Plan that follows.
Submission checklist
- Every Functional Health Pattern is addressed with data or a stated rationale for deferral.
- Each pattern is interpreted at community level, not individual level.
- Community boundaries are described geographically, geopolitically, financially, ethnically and phenomenologically.
- Social determinants of health are explicitly identified.
- Funding sources and partnerships both appear in the assessment summary.
- The interview questions are included, and the findings answer role and community health issues.
- The acknowledgement form was completed before the interview and submitted separately.
- The identified opportunity is one a teaching plan could address.
- The deck is 15-20 slides excluding title and references, and has been run through LopesWrite.
Use this guide to plan and review your own work. Follow your institution's rules and read our academic-integrity policy.
Written by
Aaron Bishop
MA, Education
assignment interpretation and research-methods coaching across disciplines
Aaron leads the EssayCrackers editorial desk. He works on how assignment briefs are read — what a rubric is actually asking for, and where students most often answer a different question than the one set.
Reviewed by
Dr. Nathan Cole
PhD, Rhetoric & Composition
Argumentation and thesis development
Nathan teaches first-year composition and directs a university writing center. He reviews EssayCrackers guides for argumentative soundness and citation accuracy.