The Shaker Heights Health department is a small department that is run by 4 major bodies. Among the 4 bodies, there is only one nurse, who is in charge of the Nursing Department. This nurse is practically in charge of the department because nothing goes through without her knowledge and approval. with her there is one intern at all times who helps out with one to two of her programs (among many) and documentations.
The health department deals with the community of about 27,000 (26,214) people, and they are in charge of keeping the children immunized, making sure the community Emergency response team is educated and kept up to date, keeping in contact with the jail house for the patients there, keeping in contact with the community elderly homes (making sure they get their shots, or other services), doing drug testing for the community workers, having health fairs and shot clinics for different age groups in the community and many more things.
so far for my capstone project i am focusing on the Seasonal Flu shot Point of Distributions (PODs) that they have annually. Last year in 2009, they vaccinated almost a thousand people (), this may not seem like much but for the amount of time they were given to distribute these shots and the last minute H1N1 vaccines, as well as keeping track of data, they have improved from past years. My capstone is going to focus on improving that number (both participants, as well as volunteers) by doing surveys in the community to see the awareness of people about these events and if there is a reason why more people dont come to this event (are they getting their shots somewhere or not at all, do they have the means to get to the event, are they busy, are they not getting the advertisement of these events etc.)
I am looking forward to this project because it also lets me work at other events and see what works there and what we can use for the improvement of this years POD.
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