| Course | PU605 Public Health Programming |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 2 |
| Paper type | Community assessment |
| Length | About 1,160 words, 7 pages double-spaced |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Purdue University Global |
| Program | Master of Public Health (MPH) |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for PU605 Unit 2
Counting the Windows, Asking the Tenants, Mapping Who Would Install Them: A Unit 2 Community Assessment Describing a Composite City Three Ways Before Any Program Is Proposed
[Student Name]
Purdue University Global
PU605: Public Health Programming
Unit 2 Community Assessment
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
Welbourne, its counts and its interview quotations are composite; the assessment structure, the data sources and the research cited are real.
Description One: What the Numbers Show
1. Population 68,000, with 4,900 children under five, 71 percent of households renting.
2. Housing stock: 11,400 units in buildings built before 1940, mostly three-family houses with double-hung windows, concentrated in four census tracts on the east side.
3. Hospital data: nine children under ten treated for falls from windows in four years, six under five, two deaths. Seven of the nine events occurred between May and September.
4. Window guard prevalence, counted from the sidewalk in a sample of 300 units in the four tracts: guards visible on 4 percent of windows above the first floor.
5. Air conditioning: 12 percent of units in the four tracts, from assessor records, against 61 percent citywide.
6. Code: the city's housing code requires guards only in buildings with four or more units, which excludes most three-deckers.
The national pattern supports treating this as an identifiable and preventable injury rather than an unavoidable accident, with falls from windows concentrated in young children and severity rising with height (Harris et al., 2011).
Description Two: What Residents Say
Eighteen interviews with tenants in the four tracts, eight in Spanish, recruited through two churches and a laundromat rather than through landlords.
1. Five parents believed the insect screen would hold a child. Two said they had been told so by a previous landlord.
2. Nine said they open windows in summer because the apartment is otherwise unbearable, and six named a specific room that reaches an unlivable temperature.
3. Four had asked a landlord for guards. One received them. Two were told the windows were fine. One was told it would affect the rent.
4. Three raised fire escape as a worry, asking whether a guard would trap them. None had seen a guard that opens from inside.
5. Two had bought guards themselves and could not install them because the drill bit would not go into the sash frame.
Every parent interviewed knew a child could fall. None of them described a window they were able to change.
Description Three: What the System Already Has
1. The health department: two public health nurses doing home visits for lead, already entering these apartments, with no injury component in their protocol.
2. Code enforcement: four inspectors, complaint-driven, who inspect on tenant complaint and at change of occupancy.
3. The fire department: conducts smoke alarm installations, owns ladders and drills, and has relationships in the four tracts.
4. Two landlord associations, covering an estimated 40 percent of the units in question.
5. A hospital trauma center that treats the injuries, has a prevention budget of 18,000 dollars a year, and no current program in this area.
6. One tenant organization, five years old, with a mailing list of 600 households.
The assessment's most useful finding is in this third description: the city already sends people with drills into these apartments for two other programs.
What the Four Tracts Look Like Side by Side
The four east-side tracts are not interchangeable, and a program that treats them as one area will misallocate its first year. Tract 14 holds the oldest stock, 3,100 pre-1940 units, the lowest guard prevalence at 2 percent, and four of the nine falls. Tract 15 has similar housing and a higher share of owner-occupied three-deckers, where the owner lives on one floor and rents the others, which matters because an owner-occupant can authorize a guard on the spot. Tract 19 has newer four-unit buildings already covered by the code requirement, and its guard prevalence is 14 percent, the highest in the study area, which is the clearest local evidence that the code works where it applies. Tract 22 has the largest share of recent immigrant households, the most Spanish-language need, and the two falls from rear-facing rooms the sidewalk survey could not see. Published case series of falls from windows and balconies report the same clustering by building type and by season, which is what makes a targeted program feasible rather than a citywide campaign (Istre et al., 2003).
What the Three Descriptions Disagree About
The numbers say the problem is concentrated in four tracts. Residents describe a problem of heat and of permission. The organizational scan says the capacity exists and is pointed elsewhere. Those three framings produce different programs, and the assessment leaves the disagreement visible rather than resolving it, because resolving it is the priority setting work of the next unit.
How the Assessment Was Done, and What It Missed
Secondary data from the hospital, the assessor and the code office; a windshield and sidewalk survey of 300 units; 18 interviews; and 11 conversations with organizations. What it missed: landlords, who declined to be interviewed as a group and whose costs and beliefs are therefore represented only through tenants' accounts. Children's own perspective, which at these ages is not obtainable. And the units with no visible windows from the street, including rear-facing rooms where two of the nine falls happened. An assessment that names its gaps is more useful to a planner than one that implies completeness, which is the standing argument for reporting the method alongside the findings (Israel et al., 1998).
What the Assessment Would Cost to Repeat
A planner reading this will ask what it took, because an assessment nobody can repeat cannot be used to measure change. The sidewalk survey of 300 units took two people four days, counted from public ways only, and is the component most worth repeating annually, since guard prevalence is the one exposure measure the city can track without anybody's permission. The eighteen interviews took six weeks to arrange and about forty hours including travel and translation, and they are the component least worth repeating often, because their value was in the two facts they produced rather than in a quantity. The secondary data took three requests and eleven days of waiting. Total staff cost was roughly 9,000 dollars. Repeating the survey each August and the interviews every third year would cost about 3,000 dollars a year, which is inside the trauma center's prevention budget and is the assessment's one unstated recommendation.
Why No Recommendation Appears Here
The assignment asks for an assessment, and the discipline of stopping is the point. Three candidate problems are now describable with evidence: windows without guards, apartments that overheat, and a code that exempts the buildings where the falls happen. Which of those a program should address depends on importance and changeability together, which is the next unit's work, and an assessment that arrives with its conclusion already written has not assessed anything.
References
Harris, V. A., Rochette, L. M., & Smith, G. A. (2011). Pediatric injuries attributable to falls from windows in the United States in 1990-2008. Pediatrics, 128(3), 455-462. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2010-2687
Israel, B. A., Schulz, A. J., Parker, E. A., & Becker, A. B. (1998). Review of community-based research: Assessing partnership approaches to improve public health. Annual Review of Public Health, 19, 173-202. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.publhealth.19.1.173
Istre, G. R., McCoy, M. A., Stowe, M., Davies, K., Zane, D., Anderson, R. J., & Wiebe, R. (2003). Childhood injuries due to falls from apartment balconies and windows. Injury Prevention, 9(4), 349-352. https://doi.org/10.1136/ip.9.4.349
What the PU605 Unit 2 assignment asks for
Unit 2 usually asks for a community assessment on a defined problem. Produce three separate descriptions: quantitative data, what residents say, and what organizations in the field can already do. Keep them apart, because each answers a question the others cannot. Report counts with their source and say how you obtained anything you collected yourself, including a sidewalk or windshield survey. Treat resident interviews as findings in their own right, especially where they produce facts no dataset holds. In the organizational scan, look for capacity already pointed somewhere else. Then state where the three descriptions disagree, name your gaps, including whoever declined to take part, and stop before recommending.
How this PU605 Unit 2 example is built
The assessment on this page gives six numbered measures with sources, including a sidewalk count of 300 units and air conditioning prevalence from assessor records. Eighteen tenant interviews follow as five numbered findings, among them the belief that a screen would hold a child and the drill bit that would not enter the sash. A highlighted line observes that every parent knew a child could fall and none could change a window. The organizational scan names six bodies, and a margin note identifies its most useful finding: the city already sends people with drills into these apartments. A tract-by-tract comparison, a costing of the assessment itself and a named gap, the landlords, close the document.
PU605 Unit 2 rubric: what earns full points
Credit here follows the three-part structure and the discipline at the end. Points come for data with sources and for primary collection described well enough to repeat, since a count nobody can reproduce cannot measure change later. Resident interviews score highest when reported as findings that the numbers could not produce. The organizational scan is rewarded for identifying existing capacity rather than listing agencies. Naming where the three descriptions disagree is weighted, because that disagreement is the next unit's work. Stating gaps, particularly a group that declined to participate, earns marks. Submissions that arrive with a recommendation lose points, because the assignment is an assessment.
Common PU605 Unit 2 mistakes, and how to avoid them
The commonest failure is an assessment that becomes a proposal in its last paragraph, which skips the priority setting the course teaches next. The second is using interviews as decoration, quoting a resident to illustrate a statistic rather than reporting what the interviews found on their own. Third, do not list agencies without saying what each can actually do and where its capacity currently goes. Avoid implying completeness: say who declined, which rooms your survey could not see, and whose perspective is missing. And cost the assessment, because a planner will want to know what repeating it takes. We will build an assessment on your own problem within two days. A last habit worth dropping: writing the organizational scan as a directory, since what a planner needs is the capacity that already exists and where it is currently pointed.
Get a PU605 Unit 2 example written to your instructions
Which population does the PU605 Unit 2 assessment cover, and is MAPP 2.0 or another framework required? Pass both along with the rubric and whatever data exist so far. Sources a reader can open, and community voice reported with its method, shape the free first custom sample, due inside 24-48 hours. The paper above is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Purdue University Global document.
More PU605 papers and MPH samples
- PU605 Unit 1: Program Framing Discussion Post
- PU605 Unit 3: Priority Setting Analysis
- PU605 Unit 4: Logic Model
- PU605 Unit 5: Intervention Design
- PU605 Unit 6: Seminar Reflection
- PU605 Unit 7: Stakeholder Engagement Plan
- PU605 Unit 8: Implementation Plan
- PU605 Unit 9: Evaluation Design
- PU605 Unit 10: Program Plan Document
- PU580 Unit 2: Exposure Assessment Comparison
- PU570 Unit 2: Measure Interpretation Exercise
- PU565 Unit 2: Paradigm Comparison Memo
- PU555 Unit 2: Research Question Memo
PU605 Unit 2 questions, answered
Where can I find a free PU605 Unit 2 sample paper?
The whole community assessment, all three descriptions, is open on this page.
Why describe a community three ways?
Because numbers show distribution, residents explain mechanism and constraint, and an organizational scan shows what can be delivered. No one of them answers the others' question.
What makes an interview finding worth reporting?
That it produces a fact no dataset holds, such as parents believing a screen is a barrier or a drill bit that will not enter the sash frame.
Should an assessment recommend a program?
No. It should leave the candidate problems describable and the disagreement between framings visible, which is what priority setting then resolves.
What belongs in the gaps section?
Anyone who declined, anything your method could not see, and any perspective the data cannot supply, such as landlords who would not be interviewed.