The Goal of Palm Beach Health Department

The Palm Beach Health Systems would like to improve communication and build awareness of public health issues that has been affecting our communities, this can be accomplished by creating new partnerships and strategic alliances within the community.

Mission

Our mission is to work alongside the Public Health Department and other organizations to bridge the gap in health awareness and personal healthcare services by first educating the population.
Black Nurses Rock-Palm Beach, Florida chartered in September of 2016, Black Nurses Rock Palm Beach became the forty second chapter to be established with Black Nurses Rock Inc. We are a non-profit 501C3 organization with a focus to foster a positive environment of professional growth and development. With an on-line presence of 166, 000 followers, BNR is able to provide a diverse group of inspiring and professional nurses to provide mentorship, and to bring light to vital issues that impact Palm Beach county.

Black Nurses Rock empowers and motivates our nurses to assist in the communities that is known as medically undeserved.

Palm Beach County

The community assessment for Palm Beach County in 2012 showed almost 20% of the population to be Hispanic and another 20% being 65 and over. In fact, almost 50% of the population is aged 50 and over.

Access to healthcare, products and services is hindered due to poverty and lack of education. The assessment report mentioned that almost 15% of the county are living in poverty, that almost 200,000 Americans. Half the population in Palm Beach county are receiving Medicaid. The community has seen over 350, 000 visits to area emergency rooms, but an area of concern is the 10% of school age children living without vaccination which place the community at increase risk for diseases.
The most compelling data that BLACK NURSES ROCK will work to impact is the “The Prevention Quality Indicators (PQI), which are measures of potentially avoidable hospitalizations. In 2010, the PQI came in at over 20,000 unnecessary hospital visits. 21% reported not having health insurance with 38% being African Americans.

An important discovery from the assessment report is that Palm Beach county fall short by 22% in the area of:
Linking people to needed personal health services and assure the provision of health care when otherwise unavailable and also in the area of: Assuring a competent public and personal health care workforce which is two important areas that can eliminate disparity in healthcare.

According to the reported data, our community would like to improve in an area that BNR excel in (ie) to increase activity around health education and health promotion campaigns.