| Course | HCR 303 Assessing Needs, Assets and Capacity for Health Education |
|---|---|
| Module | Module 1 |
| Paper type | Community health needs assessment |
| Length | About 1,335 words, 7 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Arizona State University |
| Program | BS in Community Health |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for HCR 303 Module 1
Yuma County, Arizona: A Community Health Needs Assessment on Diabetes, Food Insecurity and Coverage
Student Name
BS in Community Health, Arizona State University
HCR 303: Assessing Needs, Assets and Capacity for Health Education
Instructor Name
Month Day, Year
Yuma County, Arizona: A Community Health Needs Assessment on Diabetes, Food Insecurity and Coverage
Introduction and Purpose
A community health needs assessment answers three questions in order: what is the health of a community, what in the community produces that health and what the community already has to work with. This assessment applies those questions to Yuma County, Arizona, a border county of about 212,000 residents in the state's southwest corner. It follows the planning cycle in McKenzie et al. (2023), moving from engagement and data collection to prioritization, intervention planning and evaluation, and it borrows the PRECEDE-PROCEED logic of starting with the outcome a community wants and working backward to its causes. The purpose is to give a county health educator a ranked list of needs and a defensible first priority.
Community Profile
Yuma County's economy rests on agriculture, the military and seasonal visitors, and its population differs from Arizona's as a whole in ways that matter for health. The 2020-2024 American Community Survey counts 211,741 county residents, of whom 64.9% identify as Hispanic or Latino, compared with 31.4% statewide (U.S. Census Bureau, 2025). Spanish is the home language of more than half of residents five and older, and roughly 20% report limited English, against about 6% across Arizona. Median household income is $62,876, well below Arizona's $79,964, and the county's poverty rate of 15.6% exceeds the state's 12.5%. Among adults 25 and older, 22.5% did not finish high school, roughly twice the state share.
Health Status and Determinants
County health indicators come from CDC's PLACES 2025 release, which produces model-based estimates of adult health measures for every county from Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System data (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2025). Table 1 compares Yuma with Maricopa County, the state's largest, using age-adjusted prevalence for 2023 unless noted.
The pattern is consistent. Yuma adults report worse general health, carry more diabetes and obesity and are less active, and the conditions surrounding those outcomes are harder: one adult in four reports running short of food, one in five reports housing insecurity and nearly one working-age adult in four has no insurance. Colorectal cancer screening lags too: under half of adults old enough for routine screening are current. Depression, by contrast, is close to Maricopa's level, which suggests the county's gap is concentrated in chronic disease and its social drivers rather than spread evenly.
These figures fit what is known about how food insecurity and chronic disease travel together. Among poor adults in national survey and examination data, food insecurity was tied to laboratory and examination evidence of hypertension, and to diabetes when the strictest definition of food insecurity was used (Seligman et al., 2010). For people managing diabetes, an empty pantry at the end of the month makes a prescribed diet hard to follow and can push blood sugar in both directions.
| Measure (adults) | Yuma County | Maricopa County |
|---|---|---|
| Diagnosed diabetes | 12.9% | 9.6% |
| Obesity | 39.0% | 30.6% |
| No leisure-time physical activity | 27.7% | 20.0% |
| Food insecurity, past 12 months | 26.3% | 15.7% |
| Housing insecurity, past 12 months | 20.6% | 12.2% |
| Uninsured, ages 18-64 | 24.1% | 13.1% |
| Colorectal screening, ages 45-75 (2022) | 45.5% | 56.4% |
| Fair or poor self-rated health | 26.4% | 17.5% |
Assets and Capacity
A needs assessment that lists only deficits misses the resources a program will rely on. Asset mapping, a core step in the course text, found several. Yuma, Somerton and San Luis all have sites of a federally qualified health center network, and the county also has a public health district, a regional hospital system, a community college, a cooperative extension office and a food bank. It also has promotoras, lay health workers who live in the same colonias and neighborhoods as the families they visit and who already staff border health programs. Churches, schools and farmworker organizations reach families that clinics do not. Capacity is limited in other ways: the county is large, public transit is thin and 12.3% of adults report going without reliable transportation in the past year (CDC, 2025).
| Asset type | Examples in Yuma County | Relevance to the priority |
|---|---|---|
| Health care | Health center network, regional hospital | Diabetes care and referral |
| Public health | County health district | Data, convening, programs |
| Workforce | Promotoras in border health programs | Trusted bilingual outreach |
| Food | Regional food bank, extension office, school meals | Food access and nutrition teaching |
| Community | Churches, schools, farmworker groups | Reach and recruitment |
Prioritization
Needs were ranked on four criteria drawn from the course's prioritization week: size of the problem relative to the comparison county, seriousness of its consequences, changeability with available interventions and community concern voiced through partners. A score of 1, 2 or 3 was given on each criterion.
Diabetes paired with food insecurity ranks first. It is large, it is serious, it is linked to other needs on the list and, unlike coverage or housing, a county health education program can change parts of it directly. Uninsurance ranks second and is treated in the plan as a barrier to address through enrollment help rather than as a separate program.
| Need | Size | Seriousness | Changeability | Concern | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Diabetes with food insecurity | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 12 |
| Uninsurance | 3 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 10 |
| Low colorectal screening | 2 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 8 |
| Housing insecurity | 3 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 8 |
Recommended Intervention
The recommended program, Comer Bien, Vivir Bien (Eat Well, Live Well), would train promotoras to deliver diabetes self-management education in Spanish and English in homes and community sites, connect each participant to a primary care home and help families apply for SNAP and food bank programs. Evidence supports each part. In Detroit, a randomized trial of a culturally tailored community health worker program among African American and Latino adults lowered HbA1c by 0.8 percentage points more than a delayed-control group over six months (Spencer et al., 2011). In Philadelphia, a randomized trial assigned community health workers to low-income patients juggling two or more chronic diseases and found better quality of care and self-rated mental health, although the change in clinical measures was smaller (Kangovi et al., 2017). The program would also screen for food insecurity at enrollment and repeat the screen at six months, since addressing hunger is part of managing the disease in this community.
Evaluation Plan
Evaluation follows the three levels taught in the course. Process evaluation will count promotoras trained, households reached by language and ZIP code, sessions delivered and referrals completed. Impact evaluation will measure changes in diabetes knowledge, self-care behaviors and household food security at six months. Outcome evaluation will track HbA1c in participants' clinic records at baseline and 12 months and, over several years, the county's diabetes prevalence in later PLACES releases. Because a before-and-after design cannot rule out other causes, the program would compare early-enrolling neighborhoods with those scheduled to start a year later.
Ethics and Limitations
Several ethical commitments shape the plan. Participation is voluntary, consent forms and data use are explained in the participant's language and immigration status is never asked, since fear of exposure keeps some families from services. Clinic data are shared only with written consent. The assessment itself has limits. PLACES figures are modeled estimates, not direct county surveys, and their confidence intervals overlap for some measures; Yuma's uninsured estimate, for example, ranges from 19.4% to 29.4%. Seasonal residents and farmworkers who cross the border daily may be missed by both the Census and survey data. Primary data from focus groups with promotoras and residents would strengthen the next cycle.
Reporting and Dissemination
Findings will be shared in three forms: a full report for the county health district and hospital partners, a two-page bilingual summary for community members and a short presentation at a public meeting held in the evening, when working families can attend.
Conclusion
Yuma County's residents carry more diabetes, obesity and food insecurity than residents of the state's largest county, and many lack insurance. The county also has assets, especially bilingual promotoras and a health center network, that make a focused response possible. A promotora-led program that teaches diabetes self-care and connects families to food is the first priority this assessment recommends.
References
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2025). PLACES: Local data for better health, county data, 2025 release [Data set]. https://data.cdc.gov/500-Cities-Places/PLACES-Local-Data-for-Better-Health-County-Data-20/swc5-untb
Kangovi, S., Mitra, N., Grande, D., Huo, H., Smith, R. A., & Long, J. A. (2017). Community health worker support for disadvantaged patients with multiple chronic diseases: A randomized clinical trial. American Journal of Public Health, 107(10), 1660-1667. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2017.303985
McKenzie, J. F., Neiger, B. L., & Thackeray, R. (2023). Planning, implementing and evaluating health promotion programs (8th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Seligman, H. K., Laraia, B. A., & Kushel, M. B. (2010). Food insecurity is associated with chronic disease among low-income NHANES participants. The Journal of Nutrition, 140(2), 304-310. https://doi.org/10.3945/jn.109.112573
Spencer, M. S., Rosland, A.-M., Kieffer, E. C., Sinco, B. R., Valerio, M., Palmisano, G., Anderson, M., Guzman, J. R., & Heisler, M. (2011). Effectiveness of a community health worker intervention among African American and Latino adults with type 2 diabetes: A randomized controlled trial. American Journal of Public Health, 101(12), 2253-2260. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2010.300106
U.S. Census Bureau. (2025). American Community Survey 2020-2024 5-year estimates: Yuma County and Arizona [Data set; tables B01003, B03003, B15003, B17001, B19013, C16001]. Retrieved October 10, 2026, from https://censusreporter.org/profiles/05000US04027-yuma-county-az/
HCR 303 Module 1 instructions, in plain terms
HCR 303 ends with its largest item, the Evaluation, Ethics and Final Capstone, worth 100 of 430 points. The syllabus asks you to take what you collected in the seven weekly worksheets and produce a Community Health Needs Assessment for the community you chose. That means the capstone is less a new project than an assembly job: the worksheets on the health educator's role, planning models, theory, assessing needs, engagement, interventions and evaluation each supply a section. McKenzie, Neiger and Thackeray's Planning, Implementing and Evaluating Health Promotion Programs is the course text, and its chapters on assessment, prioritization, intervention and evaluation give the CHNA its order. Expect to include demographic and epidemiological data, assets and capacity, a prioritization, an intervention, an evaluation plan, ethics and a plan for sharing results. Generative AI is not permitted for any work in this course, and late work loses 10% a day.
How this HCR 303 Module 1 example is built
The sample follows the planning cycle from start to finish. A short purpose section names the framework, then a community profile reports dated Census figures against the state. A health status section presents eight PLACES indicators in a comparison table and explains the pattern in prose, with one study linking food insecurity to chronic disease. Assets are mapped by type in a second table, and a scoring table ranks four needs on four criteria so the choice of priority can be audited. The intervention section ties each program element to a randomized trial. Evaluation is planned at process, impact and outcome levels, and the ethics section covers consent, language, immigration fears and the limits of modeled data before a short dissemination plan and conclusion.
Where the marks sit in the HCR 303 Module 1 rubric
Canvas scores the capstone out of 100 points, and the syllabus links it to outcomes on social determinants, assets and capacity, prioritization, intervention, evaluation, ethics and communication. Strong CHNAs earn marks for current data from named sources with a sensible comparison, a description of the community that goes beyond numbers, assets treated as seriously as needs, a prioritization whose criteria are visible, an intervention backed by evidence and matched to the priority, an evaluation plan at more than one level, honest limits and a reporting plan suited to the audience. Marks fall when data are undated or uncited, when the community is described only through deficits, when the priority appears without a method, when the intervention is generic and when ethics is reduced to a sentence about confidentiality.
HCR 303 Module 1 help with common mistakes
Start by laying your weekly worksheets side by side and mapping each to a CHNA section; gaps will be obvious. Pull data from one release of each source and record the year, so your comparison is apples to apples. Pick a comparison area that makes sense, such as a neighboring county or the state. Spend as much care on assets as on needs, because your intervention will depend on them. Show your prioritization scores in a table. Choose an intervention with at least one trial behind it, and write the evaluation before you finish the intervention section, since it often exposes vague goals. Write the report you would want community members to read. If your community's data are thin, the desk can suggest public sources that work at the county or ZIP code level.
Write yours, or have the desk draft it
This paper is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Arizona State University document. Read it for the moves, then write your own to the instructions in your classroom. If you want one built to your exact prompt and rubric, the first custom sample is free and arrives in 24 to 48 hours.
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HCR 303 Module 1 questions, answered
Where can I find a free HCR 303 Module 1 sample paper?
This page has a full HCR 303 capstone sample: a community health needs assessment of Yuma County, Arizona, built on CDC PLACES and Census data.
What goes into the HCR 303 final capstone?
A full CHNA for your chosen community, assembled from the weekly worksheets: data, assets, priorities, an intervention, evaluation, ethics and reporting.
Where can I get county health data for a CHNA?
Start with CDC PLACES for modeled adult health measures down to the county and tract, then add Census survey tables on income, language and schooling.
How do I choose a priority in a needs assessment?
Score each need on criteria such as size, seriousness, changeability and community concern, and show the scores so readers can follow your reasoning.
Can I use AI tools in HCR 303?
No. No. HCR 303 forbids generative AI tools for every assignment and handles their use under ASU's academic integrity policy.