Vulnerable populations paper?!?

[mackenzieyagerr]

Guys I need your help!! I am about to start community health class and we have a paper we work on all semester worth 25% of our grade. The paper is a research paper about a vulnerable population of our choosing. I am having a hard time deciding what I should do. It needs to be kind of specific. The example used by my professor was latinos with diabetes. Does anyone have any interesting research topics about VULNERABLE POPULATIONS?? I want to pick a good one since I will be working on it for about 4 months!! THANK YOU IN ADVANCE!!

[oceanblue52]

Probably want to pick a more specific population, but rural populations is a very broad, interesting topic. Vulnerability stands to get worse as more hospitals are forced to close from funding issues. If you are on social media, follow some community health organizations in your state, they might give you some ideas. What sort of nursing are you interested in? Maybe that can help you narrow down a topic?

[FullGlass, BSN, MSN, NP]

Here is an article that lists potential vulnerable populations:

Vulnerable Populations: Who Are They?

What are you interested in? For example, if you are interested in peds, you could pick a topic based on children.

Best wishes and let us know what you decide.

[idkmybffjill]

Think about what areas you enjoy learning about and figure out what types of vulnerable populations fall into that area. The preview pages on this book give a good overview of what types of things would be considered for vulnerable populations and could be good for figuring out a specific population: At Risk in America: The Health and Health Care Needs of Vulnerable ... - Lu Ann Aday - Google Books

There's a lot of options, especially if you need to be specific--unmarried pregnant women with schizophrenia, homeless adults with HIV, abused elderly patients who have dementia, substance users living in poverty, etc, etc.

[amoLucia]

I might consider the elderly shut-in. Chronic disease, but relatively stable, altho slowly declining.

No live-in or other reliable assistance for routine needed activities like SHOPPING, household chores like heavy housecleaning, lawncare, snow removal, garbage removal, car maint, etc. PAPERWORK like doing taxes, paying bills, reading thru importants mail etc. T R A N S P O R T A T I O N, for shopping, doctor appts, etc.

It's a population on the fringe of normalcy, but they are just barely holding on.

It's also a population prone to depression from isolation and loneliness.

I believe the subject would be widely studied from healthcare, sociological and psychological perspectives.

[Julius Seizure]

How about this. Start by choosing one of the "big" diseases/conditions that gets talked about a lot. Like mental health, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, maybe certain types of cancer.

Then choose a group of people who have worse outcomes for that disease because they have more risk factors (or lifestyle factors), or have a harder time getting good treatment. Maybe undocumented immigrants, minorities, women, the uninsured/underinsured, rural populations, or something else.

I think a really interesting one would be prenatal care in women who suffer from drug addiction. They often get inadequate care because they are afraid that if their drug use is discovered, they will lose custody of their children and/or go to jail.

[Neo Soldier, BSN, RN]

I think homeless people and mentally ill people are very vulnerable especially the women in this population. I work with this population actually and I find being mentally ill coupled with poor drug adherence, drug abuse worsens the situation.