Community Health Practice
Aline Prosper
HAT 1
November 2, 2012
Western Governor University

Community Health Practice
The community we are introducing today is the people living around McGuire Veteran Affairs Medical Center in Richmond Virginia. A decade ago, African-American and European-American populated Southside Richmond only. Southside Richmond, like the whole state, is experiencing increasing racial diversity with the rapid growth of Hispanic and Asian populations. African-American population remains the largest minority group in Southside Richmond.
McGuire Veteran Affairs Medical Center is a very large hospital-serving veterans from many different states. This large medical center has thousands of employees and hundreds of patients daily in the main facility and various outpatient clinics. In the beginning of this assignment, we decided to ask veterans, nurses, doctors, and any other employees of the McGuire Veteran Affairs Medical Center how long they drive to be at the hospital. 60% drive 30 to 60 minutes to get there. The first 20% lives in the community and drives 10 to 15 minutes or takes the city bus. The other 20% drives 60 minutes or more to come to work to the hospital. We did a focus group based on the 20% who live in the community around McGuire Veteran Affairs Medical Center. These coworkers, including this writer, and patients who live in this community have low income. They are mostly housekeeping, dietary, and nursing assistance staff members. Veterans living in this area are generally lower income with no job or health insurance. Many are living on food stamps and use other forms of public assistance.
Southside Richmond around McGuire Veteran Affairs Medical Center has a very diverse population aged 65 years of age. We found a lot of adult day cares in the region. During this study, we visited ten adults day care