NU636 Unit 3 DQ 2 community health and government
Reflecting on your own community, identify three issues affecting its health, summarise the level of government involvement in each, judge whether more or less involvement would improve them, and propose solutions.
Editorial process
Last reviewed · August 14, 2026
Which level of government, for each issue
Reflect on the community in which you live is doing real work in this prompt, and the posts that go wrong answer for the country instead. Your community has a name, a population, and almost certainly a published community health needs assessment produced by a hospital system or the county health department, which will already list its priority issues with local numbers attached. Taking three issues from that document rather than three you assume is the single largest improvement available here, because it turns assertion into evidence, and it will often surprise you: the issues a nurse meets in a clinic are not always the ones the data ranks highest. Diabetes, depression and teen pregnancy are the prompt's own examples and there is no penalty for choosing them, provided you can say how large each one is where you actually live rather than nationally. Name the source and the year, and the first section is evidenced rather than remembered.
The second question turns this into a policy exercise rather than a health one. Government is not one actor and the levels behave differently. Federal involvement usually arrives as funding conditions, national programmes and regulation. State involvement covers Medicaid design, licensure, school health requirements and public health law. Local government controls zoning, the food environment, transport, parks, water and the health department that actually runs programmes, and institutional policy sits underneath all of them. Say which level currently acts on each of your three issues and the more-or-less question stops being rhetorical: more involvement in one might mean a municipal ordinance, while less in another might mean removing a prior authorisation that delays treatment. Then match each proposed solution to an authority that could enact it, because a proposal addressed to nobody in particular is the commonest way this post loses marks. Say which body you would send each proposal to.
Likely learning objectives
Inferred from the brief — check these against your own rubric.
- 01Identify health issues specific to a named community rather than to the country.
- 02Distinguish institutional, local, state and federal involvement in a health issue.
- 03Evaluate whether more or less government involvement would improve an outcome.
- 04Propose policy solutions at the level of government able to enact them.
- 05Support community health claims with local data rather than impression.
Read the full question
Review every instruction before using the planning guidance that follows.
Course-wide instructions that accompany this question
ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CLASS Discussion Questions (DQ) Initial responses to the DQ should address all components of the questions asked, include a minimum of one scholarly source, and be at least 250 words. Successful responses are substantive (i.e., add something new to the discussion, engage others in the discussion, well-developed idea) and include at least one scholarly source. NU636 Unit 3 DQ 2 One or two sentence responses, simple statements of agreement or “good post,” and responses that are off-topic will not count as substantive. Substantive responses should be at least 150 words. I encourage you to incorporate the readings from the week (as applicable) into your responses. Weekly Participation Your initial responses to the mandatory DQ do not count toward participation and are graded separately. In addition to the DQ responses, you must post at least one reply to peers (or me) on three separate days, for a total of three replies. Participation posts do not require a scholarly source/citation (unless you cite someone else’s work). Part of your weekly participation includes viewing the weekly announcement and attesting to watching it in the comments. These announcements are made to ensure you understand everything that is due during the week. APA Format and Writing Quality Familiarize yourself with APA format and practice using it correctly. It is used for most writing assignments for your degree. Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for APA paper templates, citation examples, tips, etc. Points will be deducted for poor use of APA format or absence of APA format (if required). Cite all sources of information! When in doubt, cite the source. Paraphrasing also requires a citation. I highly recommend using the APA Publication Manual, 6th edition. Use of Direct Quotes I discourage overutilization of direct quotes in DQs and assignments at the Masters’ level and deduct points accordingly. As Masters’ level students, it is important that you be able to critically analyze and interpret information from journal articles and other resources. Simply restating someone else’s words does not demonstrate an understanding of the content or critical analysis of the content. It is best to paraphrase content and cite your source. LopesWrite Policy For assignments that need to be submitted to LopesWrite, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me. Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes. Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own? Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score. Late Policy The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies. Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances. If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect. I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension. As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading. Communication Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me: Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class. Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours.
Turn the brief into deliverables
- 01Three health issues affecting your own community.
- 02A summary of government involvement in each, by level.
- 03A judgement on whether more or less involvement would help.
- 04A proposed solution for each issue.
- 05Citations and APA formatting, plus responses to classmates.
Three issues, each with involvement and a proposal
The community, described
Establish which community you mean and what characterises it.
Issue one and its governance
Name the issue and the level of government currently involved.
Issue two and its governance
Repeat for a second issue at a different level if possible.
Issue three and its governance
Complete the set and note where levels overlap or conflict.
More, less, and what you would propose
Give a judgement and a solution for each issue.
Finding what your own community actually reports
Recommended databases
- Healthy People, Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion
- Your county or city community health needs assessment
- StatPearls via NCBI Bookshelf
- KFF
- PubMed
Search sequence
- 1.Find your county's most recent community health needs assessment.
- 2.Pick three issues it names rather than three you assume.
- 3.Trace which authority funds or regulates each issue.
- 4.Look up a comparable community that changed one of them, and how.
- 5.Match each proposed solution to the level that could implement 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
Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion · 2024
Framework for locating community issues in domains policy can act on.
- 02
Public Health
StatPearls, NCBI Bookshelf · 2023
Describes which public health functions sit at which level of government.
- 03
10 Things to Know About Medicaid Managed Care
KFF · 2024
Concrete example of state and federal roles interacting in health coverage.
- 04
Objectives and Data - Healthy People 2030
Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion · 2024
National targets against which your community's issues can be compared.
Review before submission
Common mistakes
- Naming national health problems rather than issues in your community.
- Treating government as a single actor instead of naming the level involved.
- Answering the more-or-less question the same way for all three issues.
- Proposing a solution at a level of government that could not enact it.
- Relying on impression when local health assessments are published.
- Skipping the response post, which carries separate points here.
Submission checklist
- Three issues are named and located in your own community.
- The level of government involved is stated for each.
- The more-or-less judgement is made separately for each issue.
- Each proposed solution matches an authority that could act.
- Local data is cited where available.
- Responses to classmates address their level-of-involvement claims.
Use this guide to plan and review your own work. Follow your institution's rules and read our academic-integrity policy.

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