Family Assessment Part II: SDOH, screening and promotion
The second half of a family assessment, where the SDOH bullet is three questions, every family member needs their own screening rationale, and the model has to be argued as the best choice.
Editorial process
Last reviewed · August 8, 2026
How many questions are inside the SDOH bullet?
This is Part II, and its first instruction is *refer back to the interview and evaluation you conducted in the Topic 2 Family Health Assessment assignment*. That constrains everything: the family, its members, their ages and their circumstances are already fixed, and this paper must be recognisably about **that** family. Papers that quietly generalise — writing about social determinants affecting families in general, or recommending screenings for a hypothetical adult — have detached from the assignment. Re-read your Part 1 submission before starting, and take from it the specific facts each later section will need: who lives in the household, their ages, income, housing, insurance status, language and access to care. A useful test at the end: could a marker who read your Part 1 tell that this is the same household? If any section would read identically for a different family, it is not finished.
The SDOH bullet is three questions, not one. *Describe the SDOH that affect the family health status. What is the impact of these SDOH on the family? Discuss why these factors are prevalent for this family.* Description, impact and prevalence are separate, and the third is the one usually skipped: it asks why *this* family faces these determinants — neighbourhood, employment sector, immigration status, education, historical disinvestment — rather than simply that they do. The rubric carries the same three elements, so the safest structure is a short passage on each rather than one flowing paragraph in which the third quietly disappears. Answering the third question well usually means naming something structural rather than something the family chose, which is also what the determinants framework is for.
*Age-appropriate screenings for each family member* is the most checkable requirement in the brief, and it means every member, individually. A four-year-old, a fifteen-year-old, a forty-year-old and a seventy-year-old have almost nothing in common on a screening schedule, and a paper that recommends the same panel to the adults has answered a question about one person. The word **rationale** is there too: each recommendation needs a reason, and the strongest reasons come from two places — the national screening recommendation for that age and sex, and the specific risk this family's determinants create. The second is what makes the section about this family rather than a schedule reproduced. Note that some screenings depend on risk rather than age alone, so a family history recorded in Part 1 can justify starting one earlier than the standard schedule would.
Choosing the health model is a graded judgement rather than a formality: *describe the model selected*, then *discuss the reasons why this health model is the best choice for this family*, with rationale. **Best choice** implies alternatives you considered and rejected, and one sentence naming what a rival model would have missed converts an assertion into an argument. The models differ in what they explain — one centred on individual beliefs about a threat, another on perceived benefits and self-efficacy, another on the family unit and its interactions — so the right choice depends on whether your family's barriers are informational, motivational or structural. Say in one line what the model you rejected would have handled worse, and the justification is done; without that line the section is a description with a preference attached.
The last bullet contains a requirement that is easy to lose inside it: *outline the steps for a family-centred health promotion. Include **strategies for communication**.* Communication is named separately because it is where family-centred work differs from individual work — who in the family makes health decisions, whether an interpreter is needed, health literacy, and how you reach a household whose members work different shifts. Note also the sourcing rule: at least three peer-reviewed sources published **within the last five years**, which rules out citing the original statement of whichever health model you choose toward that count. Household routines matter here too, since a plan that assumes everyone is available at the same time is not family-centred however well the model was applied.
Requirement | What it means here | The paper that fails it |
|---|---|---|
Refer back to Part 1 | The same family, with its own facts | Families in general |
Describe the SDOH | The determinants this family actually faces | A list of the five SDOH domains |
Impact on the family | What each determinant changes for them | A statement that SDOH matter |
Why prevalent for this family | The reason these ones, here | The question skipped |
Screenings for each member | Individually, by age and sex | One panel applied to the adults |
Support and rationale | Guideline plus this family's risk | The recommendation with no reason |
Best model, with reasons | An alternative considered and rejected | The first model that came to mind |
Strategies for communication | Decision-makers, language, literacy, access | A closing sentence about talking clearly |
Likely learning objectives
Inferred from the brief — check these against your own rubric.
- 01Apply social determinants of health to one specific household rather than to a population.
- 02Individualise preventive screening by age, sex and risk.
- 03Justify the selection of a theoretical model against alternatives.
- 04Plan communication as part of a family-centred intervention.
Read the full question
Review every instruction before using the planning guidance that follows.
What the 750–1,000 word Part II paper must contain
- 01A 750–1,000 word paper.
- 02The SDOH affecting this family's health status.
- 03The impact of those determinants on the family.
- 04Why those factors are prevalent for this family.
- 05Age-appropriate screenings for each family member, with rationale.
- 06A health model, described and justified as the best choice.
- 07Steps for a family-centred health promotion using that model.
- 08Strategies for communication.
- 09At least three peer-reviewed sources from the last five years.
From determinants to screenings, a model and a plan
Social determinants affecting this family
Identify the determinants at work and what each changes for the household.
Why these determinants, for this family
Explain what makes these factors prevalent in their circumstances.
Age-appropriate screening, member by member
Recommend screenings for each person with a stated rationale.
The health model and why it fits
Describe the selected model and defend it as the best choice here.
A family-centred promotion plan
Work the model's steps into a plan of action for this family.
Communication strategies
Set out how the plan reaches every member of the household.
Finding screening guidance and recent model evidence
Recommended databases
- Your Part 1 family health assessment
- Healthy People 2030
- US Preventive Services Task Force recommendations
- CINAHL and PubMed Central
Search sequence
- 1.Re-read the Part 1 submission first and list the facts you will need, because the rubric rewards a paper that is unmistakably about the family you interviewed.
- 2.Look up the current screening recommendations by age and sex before writing that section, since the rationale requirement is far easier to meet when the guideline is in front of you.
- 3.Search each identified determinant paired with a health outcome, so the impact section rests on evidence rather than on plausibility.
- 4.Filter every search to the last five years from the start, because the source rule is a hard constraint and the model's founding papers will not satisfy it.
Social determinants and preventive screening sources
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
Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion · 2025
The framework your first section should be organised by — economic stability, education access, health care access, neighbourhood and built environment, and social context. Use it to name the domains, then leave it behind, because the bullet asks which determinants affect *this* family and a domain list is not an answer.
- 02
Home page | United States Preventive Services Taskforce
US Preventive Services Task Force · 2025
The source of the age- and sex-specific screening recommendations the second bullet needs, with the grade attached to each. Citing the grade as well as the recommendation is what turns “support and rationale” into evidence, and it lets you say which screenings are strongly recommended and which are conditional.
- 03
Application and Effectiveness of the Nola Pender Model in Nursing: A Narrative Review
Nursing Reports · 2026
Directly useful for the third bullet, since the health promotion model is one of the obvious candidates and this reviews where it has actually been applied and how well it worked. That evidence is what makes “best choice for this family” an argument rather than a preference, and it is recent enough to count toward the five-year rule.
- 04
A Community-Based Intervention to Address Social Determinants of Health: A Pilot Study
Journal of Community Health Nursing · 2025
A worked example of moving from identified determinants to an intervention, which is the transition this paper has to make between its first and last sections. Its account of what the intervention actually involved is a useful check on whether your own plan of action is specific enough to be carried out.
Before Family Assessment Part II is submitted
Common mistakes
- Writing about social determinants generally instead of about this family.
- Listing the five SDOH domains rather than the ones this family faces.
- Skipping the question of why these determinants are prevalent for them.
- Recommending one screening panel for all the adults.
- Giving screenings with no rationale, or rationale drawn only from guidelines.
- Choosing a health model without saying why it beats the alternatives.
- Describing the model at length and applying it briefly.
- Treating communication as a closing sentence rather than a required strategy.
- Citing the model's original publication toward the three recent sources.
- Ignoring the rubric, which mirrors the bullets and their sub-parts.
Submission checklist
- The family from Part 1 is identifiable throughout.
- SDOH are named for this family specifically.
- Impact is stated for each determinant identified.
- The question of why these factors are prevalent is answered.
- Every family member has their own screening recommendations.
- Each recommendation has a rationale tied to age and to family risk.
- The chosen model is described and defended against an alternative.
- The promotion plan follows the model's own steps.
- Communication strategies are specific to this household.
- Three or more sources are peer-reviewed and under five years old.
- Word count falls between 750 and 1,000.
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.