Module Components

• Overview

Topics

• Definitions
• Case Study: Curtis Bay
• Community Assessment and Diagnosis
• Role of the Public Health Nurse
• Resources for Assignments

Nurs 467 - Public Health Nursing

Module 3: Community Assessments, Analysis & Diagnosis

Case Study: Curtis Bay

In 2012, sixteen year-old Destiny Watford was like many Baltimore teens. She want to her neighborhood high school, spent her free time with friends and family, and didn’t give much thought to how conditions in her community of Curtis Bay affected her health and the health of her neighbors.

However, like many areas of Baltimore City, the Curtis Bay community faces significant challenges. In the mid-1800’s, Curtis Bay and adjacent Brooklyn was a thriving commercial hub for farmers en route from Anne Arundel county to Baltimore City to sell their produce. At the turn of the 20th century, Curtis Bay became home to several important industries: most notably Davison Chemical Co, at the time the largest producer of superphosphates in the world, and across the Patapsco river, Bethlehem Steel, which by the 1940’s was the largest shipyard in the world, employing 47,000 people in high paying, union jobs. People seemed proud to live in Curtis Bay.

But in the 1970’s many such industries moved their jobs overseas, or became more automated, decreasing job availability. When Bethlehem Steel filed for bankruptcy in the early 2000’s, tens of thousands of people lost their pensions and health care. Pollution from the coal burning power plant and from the remaining heavy industry became a source of frustration for the community. People with means moved away. Home prices, already low, stagnated, giving residents little incentive to improve or stay in their homes.

One day Destiny saw a local play about pollution. The topic struck a chord in her and she started to make connections between the level of industry in her community and the number of people she knew with asthma - her mother, her neighbors, almost every student in her art class. That same year, she heard that a company called Energy Answers International had plans to build a large incinerator in Curtis Bay.

This semester, we will use Destiny’s story and the Curtis Bay community as a case study in community and public health nursing. In Module 3, we introduce the community as it was then, combating the proposed trash burning incinerator. In this module, we will be assessing the community as a whole, without putting too much focus on the proposed incinerator. We will take on the roles of public health nursing students working in Curtis Bay.

Be sure to watch the videos and click on the links throughout the module, they present crucial material for the case study. When you have reviewed all of the material, head to the discussion board for our first interactive discussion.