This walk-through is intended to make your life easier by giving you first-hand advice on every section of this paper - my personal writing experience. I have had many requests to post it and have finally found some time now. Hope it helps!
To call my shots, I'll focus mostly on the paper. You do, however, want to review all the resources alongside.
First, the paper has two major/different parts: (A) Activity Log and (B) the actual field-experience paper.
Part A. Activity Log
This is a straightforward activity and will consume your time filling in the fields in the table but does not require any specialized knowledge. You want to provide the details of all the persons you contacted during your fieldwork (usually, googling around town works well 😉). A total 90 hours' log is needed, and you've already completed 25 hours. So, now you need the activity for 65 hours of the fieldwork! There is a snapshot from an original paper I did for a client (specific areas blacked out - you know!) for you to see how it is done: |
| Example for Activity Log: C229 Part A |
That's it! Pretty simple, isn't it? All the As will be done this way. You can be more creative if you like.
EDIT: Please note that in the wake of coronavirus outbreak, the activity log has changed a bit. It now mostly include online field activity, i.e., time spent on learing more about your topic, virtual interviews, webinars, etc. I think it should come pretty easy to you still.
Part B: Background and fieldwork
B. This section marks the start of C229: Social Media Campaign Paper. Let's cover all the bases.
Community Health Diagnostic statement: Suppose you've selected to work on obesity (among disadvantaged females in our town) as your topic. The diagnostic statement needs to make the diagnosis. For this you can refer to existing literature/information.
Example: According to Taxes Health Assessment Report (2016), obesity in disadvantaged female population in my city is on the rise due to lack of awareness, access, and unhealthy lifestyle. Thus, over the years, the number has risen to ......
B1. Health Inequity/Disparity
The instructions, accompanying the Rubric, clearly lay out that in this section you need to provide a link between the diagnosis (above) with ground realities. Put another way, you need to simply cite literature to substantiate your diagnosis, that is, disadvantaged female population in your city is gaining weight.
Some facts about obesity you want to consider doing this section: Though it affects all races and ethnic groups, more burden is on people with low socioeconomic profile because of lack of resources, etc.
B1A. Primary Community and Prevention Resources
This section is simple. There is a need to find out what resources are already available in your community. My experience doing this for different clients informs me that although resources in a city are available, potential clients (e.g. obese individuals, older adults, those doing drugs) lack information or access to these. Some towns in US are remote which is another reason. So, you can do the research to find out the available resources and highlight why your population is unable to access these resources (usually lack of access, information, and means).
B1b. Underlying Causes
This is also quite simple. I have already covered some underlying causes above. There may be more for you to find out.
B2. Evidence-Based Practice
Now, this is a bit tricky. In this section, you must cite a few recent resources that offer some detail about how authorities, hospitals, and town administration, etc., in your community, are working to ensure EBP is offered to obese individuals in your town and state. We all know that incorporation of EBP in the mainstream healthcare is being pushed, but the process is still slow. For obesity, you can look for programs that offer nutrition/calorie-based diet training, physical activity, and behavioral change for healthful living (these are some of the major EBP areas within obesity).
B2a. Identification of Data
As the prompt in the Instructions informs, it is a pretty simple portion. 3 smaller paragraphs or one with the 3 combined. Here you talk about available literature on the local, state, and national levels in regards to your findings about obesity among females of your chosen group.
National level data is readily available so is that of the states. Now, if your town is smaller, probably, there is not much empirical research. Thus, in the light of my personal experience, you can directly refer to your findings during the fieldwork for local data:
For instance, I talked to Martha, a 23-year-old woman, about her weight, and she knew little about such and such services which surprised me a bit. It also convinced me of the disconnect between the consumers and the services, etc.
Part C: Social Media Campaign
This is a newly introduced part to c229, probably a year or so old. WGU (and others that have this same practicum) rightly sensed the need to introduce it because of increasing use of social media in our daily lives. You want to relax as I will try to explain it in a way that you'll find easy to do for yourself.
C1. Social Media Campaign Objectives
This section asks you to develop your objectives (at least two) so that your entire campaign can be based on these. Definitely, no campaign can materialize without its objectives. I have done this paper on quite a few topics, so I am thinking I should share objectives for more topics here than for obesity alone (to make your life even easier 😀). I am giving you just the crux of this point, you can add other details such as age group, time, setting, etc. ALWAYS connect your objective to existing EBP literature.
So, for the chosen obese female population:
Objective 1: To create awareness about the risks of more weight....etc. and
Ob. 2. To involve them in physical activity (based on EBP).
Elderly Fall
Ob. 1: To assess nursing homes for falls risks and educate older adults....
Ob. 2: To offer training to the residents to prevent falls (based on EBP)
Vaping among youth
Ob 1: To understand the environmental factors for vaping...
Ob 2: To offer intervention to create awareness about its harms.
Ob 1: To understand the environmental factors for vaping...
Ob 2: To offer intervention to create awareness about its harms.
C2. Social Marketing Interventions
Please pay attention. Here, you need to discuss 2 interventions (or more) closely based on your objectives in C1 above; it must be "population focused" and "logically explained" to "improve the health message" (Instructions, p. 1).
Let's pick objectives from tab 2 above (Elderly Fall).
To assess falls risk in the nursing homes, the social media campaign will offer free assessment visits by my team (or partners, etc.). To educate older adults, I will work in partnership with relevant stakeholders to develop educational material, hands-on activities, etc. and to offer training to both staff and the residents....
You do want to see that each intervention is tied to the corresponding objective above. Now, you will actually use the social media to engage your population to achieve these objectives.
C3: Social Media Platforms and C3a. Benefits of Social Media Platforms
It's pretty straightforward. You want to choose 3-4 platforms: (1) an official website, (2) Facebook, (3) Twitter, and (4) Instagram (for youth). For specific populations, there are region-based platforms as well that you can find out if interested. But I think these are enough.
Say a few lines about the benefits of each. An official website is necessary for legitimizing the whole campaign with a physical address and phone number, etc. Facebook keeps people engaged for hours; Twitter offers fast news dissemination, etc.
(Remember to cite references; there are plenty out there!).
C4: Benefits to Target Population
You're spending so much time and effort, so how about saying a few things about the benefits of this campaign that your target population may bag away with them? It's also a simple prompt. You'd want to share a few benefits such as they will be able to obtain firsthand expert advice via this campaign; the target population will be able to work as a big virtual team to life each other up; they will find profound motivation in this campaign, etc.
D. Best Practices for Social Media
You must review available literature to find out population-based best practices; however, it's no biggie, etc. Common best practices you want to talk about are: simple layout and font, language; consistency, and security of data/privacy.
Part E: Partners and Practicables
E1. Stakeholders Roles and Responsibilities
Here, you need to identify a few community-based stakeholders and the responsibilities each may have in executing your SM campaign. Doing some googling will give you names of major NGOs, hospitals, nonprofits, and state agencies for your town. You can talk a bit about the support you will get from each.
For example: The Dept. of Parks in my town has promised to develop tailored recreational programs for obese females; XYZ NGO has considering offering fitness equipment, etc.
E2. Potential Partnerships
It is similar to the one above. You need to find a few relevant stakeholders and say a bit about the kind of partnerships you're working on to develop with them: (1) To offer discounted food from the supermarket (NGO); to involve the obese females in the state-sponsored training, etc.
E3. Implementation Timeline
How much time should all of this take? From planning and executing the entire campaign, probably, a community healthy nurse would take about three to four months, right? So, say that planning would take about 4 to 8 weeks, fund raising another 4-6, then developing the website and campaign another 4-8 weeks.
E4. How to Evaluate Effectiveness
This takes you back to your objectives above. You now have to discuss how you are going to measure if your campaign is effective (i.e., it really made a difference).
For obese females, Objective One can be assessed by checking their knowledge through a questionnaire at the end, and Objective Two can be assessed by checking their weight (or BMI).
For older adults, Obj. One can be measured by the same questionnaire technique (what or if they have learned anything new), and Obj. Two can be measured by screening: (roadblocks removed, the adults keep their gait balance, etc.).
E5. Cost of Implementation
Let's break the costs first. How many team members you'd need? A website developer (freelance like me? 😛), a graphic designer, a data entry professional, a SM manager? So, each one will charge something on a monthly/quarterly basis to ensure your campaign is up-to-date and frictionless. So list each guy in the table, put down the potential expense + plus hosting and domain, etc. It will give you an estimated cost. That's it!
F. Reflection on SM Marketing and F1. Ref. on Future Nursing Practice
These are pretty straightforward prompts though a bit technical.
How your SM marketing campaign will benefit your population? In many, many ways, e.g., we all know that before SM, it was impossible to reach far-lying groups and connect them together (without moving them from their chair!): major benefit. Similarly, like-minded people in the past just couldn't find each other on this level. Online support group is a BIG boon of SM, etc. (Cite some literature!)
If you do a SM campaign just like this one, it will certainly give you IT-related expertise, community-based experience, and most of all, leadership skills in collaboration, teamwork, and consultation. Say these things in more fancy ways, and we're done! 😎
If you found this post worth your time, I'd be happy to have a should out from you, and remember, I am always there to assist you at: meokhan2/at/gmail[dot]com
