| Course | NR 586NP Population Health and Epidemiology for Advanced Nursing Practice |
|---|---|
| Week | 2 |
| Paper type | Community profile |
| Length | About 1,190 words, 5 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Chamberlain University |
| Program | MSN, nurse practitioner core |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for NR 586NP Week 2
Community Profile: Hollis County, a Composite Appalachian Coal County, Drawn by Its Boundary, Compared With the State and Nation, and Read for Hepatitis C Risk and Capacity
Student Name
College of Nursing, Chamberlain University
NR 586NP: Population Health and Epidemiology for Advanced Nursing Practice
Instructor Name
Month Day, Year
Community Profile: Hollis County, a Composite Appalachian Coal County, Drawn by Its Boundary, Compared With the State and Nation, and Read for Hepatitis C Risk and Capacity
Where the Line Is Drawn
The community is Hollis County, a composite county set in the coal country of central Appalachia, defined by its county boundary. I chose the county rather than the health center's service area because the county is the unit the state health department reports by, and because the center's patients are only the people who already reach care. The county has one town of about 9,000 people, two smaller towns and wide stretches of hollows and ridges. All figures below describe a composite modeled on counties of this kind; they are set out the way a real profile would set them out.
Sources With Dates Attached
Population and income: pooled Census Bureau survey estimates for 2019 through 2023.
Insurance: the same survey, same period.
Health outcomes and behaviors: County Health Rankings, 2025 release, which draws on data from several years (Remington et al., 2015).
Hepatitis C reports: the state health department's surveillance system, calendar year 2025, provisional for the final quarter.
Overdose deaths: state vital statistics, 2024 final.
Because the sources cover different years, each comparison below uses the matching year for the state and nation.
The Population's Shape
Hollis County has 38,200 residents. Adults aged 18 to 39 number about 9,350 (24%), adults 40 and over about 19,700 (52%) and children about 9,150 (24%). Compared with the state, the county is slightly older and has fewer residents aged 25 to 39, because young adults leave for work.
Median household income is about $41,000, compared with about $55,000 for the state and $75,000 nationally. Nearly a quarter of residents (23%) fall below the poverty threshold, against 17% statewide and 12% nationally.
English is spoken at home by almost all residents. About 8% of adults under 65 are uninsured, close to the state figure, because the state expanded Medicaid; about 38% of residents are covered by Medicaid, compared with 28% statewide.
About one household in five has no broadband subscription, and the nearest hospital with a liver specialist is 70 miles away.
Health Indicators Beside a Larger Unit
| Indicator | Hollis County | State | United States |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drug overdose deaths per 100,000 (2024) | 64 | 48 | 32 |
| Adults reporting fair or poor health (%) | 28 | 22 | 17 |
| Primary care physicians per 100,000 | 38 | 66 | 75 |
| Newly reported chronic hepatitis C per 100,000 (2025) | 372 | 190 | not comparable |
The national hepatitis C rate is left blank because states use different reporting rules, so a national figure would not measure the same thing.
On every row the county is worse than the state. The overdose rate is twice the national rate, which matters for hepatitis C because injection drug use is now the main route of new infections in the region (Zibbell et al., 2018). The low ratio of physicians to population means nurse practitioners at the health center carry much of primary care.
Assets
The county has a federally qualified health center with three sites, which has screened every adult patient for hepatitis C since 2022. A syringe services program run by the health department operates two days a week in the main town and once a week from a van in the outlying areas. Two churches host recovery meetings most nights. The county jail began offering hepatitis C testing at intake in 2024. A regional pharmacy chain has three stores in the county and can order direct-acting antiviral drugs within two days. The high school runs a health careers program that places students at the health center.
A profile that lists only disease would read like a stranger's account. These assets are where any program would start.
The Residents Nobody Counted
Several groups are poorly captured by these sources. People without a fixed address are undercounted by the survey. People in jail are not in the survey's household sample. People who never visit a clinic are not tested and do not appear in hepatitis C reports. People who leave the county for work during the week may be counted at a home address where they rarely are. For hepatitis C in particular, the people most at risk, those who inject drugs and are not in contact with services, are the least likely to appear in any figure above.
What I Saw Myself
I drove the county's main roads on two weekdays in September and visited the syringe services van on a Thursday. Three things stood out that no table showed. First, the van's afternoon stop at a closed gas station drew about 20 people in two hours, several of whom said they had never been tested for hepatitis C. Second, the health center's outlying site is open three days a week, and its parking lot was full by 9:00. Third, there is no public transport; a resident without a car who lives in a hollow is effectively an hour from any clinic.
How the Indicators Were Chosen
I chose indicators that bear on hepatitis C either directly or through the conditions that drive it. Overdose deaths stand in for injection drug use, which is hard to measure directly in a county this size. Fair or poor health gives a general picture of burden. The physician ratio shows capacity. Poverty and broadband show the barriers to reaching care. I left out indicators such as obesity and smoking, which matter for the county's health but would not change a hepatitis C plan. A profile that lists every available measure loses the reader; this one is built for a specific question, which the course's later weeks pursue. Friis and Sellers (2021) describe a community profile as the descriptive base for later analytic work, and the choice of indicators follows from that.
What Residents Said
At the syringe services van, I asked six clients, with the outreach worker present, what would make testing and treatment easier. Four said transport to the health center. Two said they did not want to be seen at the clinic in town. One said the van was the only place staff did not judge them. These are a handful of voices, not a survey, but they match the barriers the figures suggest and add one the figures cannot: stigma attached to being seen at a clinic.
What the Profile Suggests
The county has more risk than the state, less clinical capacity and real assets in the health center, the syringe services program and the jail testing. The hepatitis C rate is high, but much of that may reflect how much testing the health center does, a question for the later surveillance review.
Limits
The figures are composite and some come from small samples with wide margins of error, particularly the survey estimates for income and insurance in a county this size.
References
Friis, R. H., & Sellers, T. A. (2021). Epidemiology for public health practice (6th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Remington, P. L., Catlin, B. B., & Gennuso, K. P. (2015). The County Health Rankings: Rationale and methods. Population Health Metrics, 13, 11. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12963-015-0044-2
Zibbell, J. E., Asher, A. K., Patel, R. C., Kupronis, B., Iqbal, K., Ward, J. W., & Holtzman, D. (2018). Increases in acute hepatitis C virus infection related to a growing opioid epidemic and associated injection drug use, United States, 2004 to 2014. American Journal of Public Health, 108(2), 175-181. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2017.304132
What the NR 586NP Week 2 assignment asks for
The Week 2 profile begins by drawing a line around a place, such as a county, a group of ZIP codes or a hospital service area, stated as a boundary. Inside it, give the population's shape: age structure, income, languages, insurance and access to care. Set each health indicator beside the same measure for a larger unit so a reader can see whether the place is unusual. Date every source. Include assets as well as problems. Most rubrics mark down a profile of the clinic panel presented as the community, an indicator dump with no comparisons, undated sources mixed in one table and a portrait that lists only disease. Expect to say who the data leave out.
How the NR 586NP Week 2 example is put together
The sample draws the county boundary and explains why it was chosen over the health center's service area. Sources are listed with their years. The population section covers age bands, income, poverty, insurance and broadband against state and national figures. A table compares overdose deaths, fair or poor health, physician supply and hepatitis C reports, with the national hepatitis C cell left blank and explained. The indicators are justified one by one. Assets include the health center, a syringe services van, recovery meetings, jail testing and pharmacies. Uncounted residents, a windshield survey, residents' comments and limits close the profile. Margin notes mark where the boundary, the dated sources and the assets earn credit.
Reading the NR 586NP Week 2 grading rubric
The expensive mistake is profiling the clinic panel and calling it the community, and this profile uses the county boundary for exactly that reason. An indicator dump with no comparison means nothing can be called high or low, so every indicator here sits beside state and national figures. Undated sourcing costs a row, and each source carries its years. A deficit portrait reads as a stranger's account, while this profile gives assets their own section. Naming the residents the data miss earns the next criterion. A windshield survey and short conversations add what tables cannot show, and an explanation of why each indicator was chosen shows the profile was built for a question.
NR 586NP Week 2 help from the desk
Weak NR 586NP Week 2 profiles describe the writer's clinic patients and call them the community. Others list pages of figures with nothing to compare them against. Many mix sources from different years without saying so. Assets are often left out entirely. Few profiles mention who is undercounted, such as people without an address or people in jail. Choose a boundary, give every figure a date and a comparison, and visit the place yourself. Explain why each indicator matters to the question you will pursue. If your community differs, send its boundary and the sources you have, and a sample profile can be laid out the same way.
Get a NR 586NP Week 2 example written to your instructions
Send the community profile instructions from your classroom, the rubric if one came with them and the geography you have been assigned, and a custom example profile is written to those specifics and returned within 24-48h. The first one is free. Tell us which sources your section expects and the example is built from those.
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NR 586NP Week 2 questions, answered
Which sources belong in a community profile?
Census and survey estimates for the people, a state or county health department release for the indicators, and a hospital or agency report where one covers your boundary. What matters more than the list is that each carries a year and a geography matching the line you drew. A national figure standing in for one district is the commonest weakness in these drafts.
Is the community the same as the patients I see?
No, and the distance between the two is much of what the week is teaching. Your panel is filtered by who has transport, coverage, trust and a working phone. A profile that starts from the panel inherits every one of those filters and then reports them as facts about the population, which is the reversal the assignment is built to catch.
How much of the profile should be problems?
Enough to justify the closing claim and no more. Graders look for capacity as well as burden, because an intervention proposed later has to run on something already present in the place: clinics, faith networks, employers, schools, a transit line. Profiles that record only what is wrong leave the weeks that follow with nothing to build on.
Where can I find a free NR 586NP Week 2 sample paper?
The full community profile of a composite Appalachian county, with dated sources, comparisons and assets, is published on this page.
Why is the national hepatitis C rate left blank in the NR 586NP Week 2 profile?
States use different reporting rules, so a national figure would not measure the same thing as the county and state rates.