User:J0820/sandbox

Selecting possible articles
Area - "Oakland, California" and "Alameda County, California"

Sector - "Community Health", "Mental health inequality", and "Community health centers in the United States"

"Oakland, California"
The demographics sections cites statistics that are from 2010. I'm sure that there is more recent data that is available; this issue was mentioned on the talk page, but it does not look like anyone has tried to fix it yet. Currently, the healthcare section only contains information on large hospital systems in Oakland; I would like to include information on the smaller community health clinics in Oakland. This article is rated B-class and is part of 4 different WikiProjects.

"Community health centers in the United States"
Under the patient demographics section of this article, the statistics are a bit out of date, as they are from 2007 and 2008. Updating the statistics so that they are more recent will definitely improve the accuracy and relevance of this article. The Talk page of this article has only been added to by one user, who appears to have been another student editor in a class last semester. Additionally, this article is part of the WikiProject United States and WikiProject Hospitals. This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale or the importance scale. After reviewing the article several times, I have decided to also rephrase a lot of the "Services" section.

Summarizing and synthesizing
For Peer Review: [I copy/pasted from the original article and made my planned edits bold]

"Services" [for Community health centers in the United States article]

Integration of health care services is a major focus emphasis of community health centers, in addition to the provision of preventive and comprehensive care. Services provided can vary depending upon the site, but frequently include primary care, dental care, counseling services, women's health services, podiatry, mental and behavioral health services, substance abuse services, and physiotherapy. Often, CHCs are the only local source of dental, mental health, and substance abuse care available to low-income patients.

Because patients can come from a diverse range of socioeconomic, educational, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds, CHCs offer additional public health services unrelated to direct care, such as health promotion and education, advocacy and intervention, translation and interpretation, public benefit registration, and case management. CHCs emphasize empowerment, so they also have programs to help eligible patients apply to federally funded health coverage programs, such as Medicaid .

Additionally, CHCs place great emphasis on meeting community needs. To meet this goal, administrative and health care personnel meet regularly to focus on the health care needs of the particular ly community that they are trying to serve. Individual CHCs will often provide specialized programs tailored to the populations they serve. These populations could include specific minority groups, seniors and the elderly, or those facing the homeless ness. To determine what the community's needs may be, CHC staff may decide to engage in community-based participatory research. The mission extent of success of community health centers depends on collaborative relationships with community members, industry, government, hospitals and other health care services and providers.

"Quality of Care" [for Community health centers in the United States article]

Quality of care at CHCs can be assessed through many measurements and indices, including the availability of preventative services, treatment and management of chronic diseases, other health outcomes, cost effectiveness, and patient satisfaction. According to several studies, the quality of care at community health centers is comparable to the quality of care provided by private physicians. Nevertheless, community health centers face numerous challenges in light of their source of funding and the vulnerability of the population they serve. However, one major challenge that community health centers face is that the population that they serve is usually dealing with many other factors that can also detrimentally affect their health. As CHCs primarily treat the low-income and uninsured, many of their patients do not regularly see a primary care physician, which can lead to poorer health outcomes [added citation]. Additionally, Gay Becker, a medical anthropologist at UCSF, conducted research that indicated that many CHC patients delay seeking health care because they hold a negative view of the health care safety net and expect discrimination from CHCs .

[created new paragraph] It is crucial for CHCs to evaluate the quality of care they provide in order to meet federal requirements and to fulfill their mission of eliminating health disparities based on socio-economic and insurance status.

'''Currently, there is no government program in place to monitor and evaluate the quality of care of CHCs. Such a program did exist briefly from 2002 to 2004; From 2002 to 2004, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and HRSA jointly monitored CHC providers, finding that CHCs often operated independently and haphazardly, with little communication or cohesion between groups of providers [because I cannot find a source for this claim]'''. Since this program ended, there has been no federal system in place to monitor and evaluate the progress and success of CHCs.

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These are just my notes - NOT FOR PEER REVIEW

Add to "Demographics" section of "Community health centers in the United States" article: information on LGBTQ patients.

Will make a new "Current Statistics" section for "Community health centers in the United States" article: Currently, there are over 8000 community health centers in the United States, and together, they serve about 20 million Americans. These community health centers are funded by the government, under the Public Health Service Act. Not only do the community health centers offer traditional medical care, but they also offer dental, behavioral, and social services to the community. They do not only focus on the direct care aspect; they also provide translation and interpretation services, as well as transportation aid. They also emphasize empowerment, so they have programs that aim to help eligible patients apply for federally funded health coverage programs, such as Medicaid. Current statistics show that a notable percentage of the patients served are women and children; additionally, the majority of the patients live in poverty and are from minority groups.