NURS FPX 6026 Assessment 1 Analysis of Position Papers for Vulnerable Populations
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NURSE-FPX 6026-A1
Capella University
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Submission Date
NURS FPX 6026 Assessment 1 Analysis of Position Papers for Vulnerable Populations
Position papers are a formal document in which the position of an organization and/or individual is based to voice a position on a health-related issue of importance. They are implemented in policy formulation, particularly in the field of nursing, to have knowledge about what should be considered as acceptable standards, and how to encourage. In this paper, the position papers currently available on depression, especially among black/African American adults in the community primary healthcare environment are evaluated. Depression among blacks is under reported and under treated, there is also the evidence that blacks present at the time of their depression at being significantly sicker when compared to non-Black American. The purpose of this analysis is to: Summarize pro and con arguments that have been presented in these position papers; and Assist the interprofessional response team in responding to these position papers.
Position Regarding Health Outcomes
Depression related HDP is a growing and ongoing Public Health Issue. The 2024 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) Office of Minority Health (DHM) data shows that African American/Black was 36% less likely to receive mental health problem assistance within the last year as compared to the rest of the U.S. Population. It’s not a decreased demand but the inequity that has become part of the Health Care System. While methods targeting the Primary Care Providers that are grounded in evidence are needed to enhance the depression outcome in this Population, such interventions must be targeted to the providers of these services.
Mental health – and in particular depression – among blacks is influenced by social determinants of health as well as structural racism. In a different study, Bolt (2023) reported higher rates of depression symptoms among the non-Hispanic Black community at 35.2% of the population in January 2022 compared to April 2020 at 25.6%. The health care system’s treatment of blacks for many years has been unfair, particularly in some of its services, leading to the reluctance of many blacks to avail themselves of services. Eliminating inequities is a pivotal element in each of the puzzle pieces for improved depression outcomes among black Americans.
Assumptions Underlying the Plan
There are many different types of interprofessional interventions, and each of these interventions assumes a population(s) that the intervention is designed to serve and/or a health system that the intervention fits into. So, in our group, we believe the two issues are: doctors think black people are less likely to be depressed and work environments are racially biased, so that’s two factors that leads to underdiagnosing depression in black people. As well, culturally competent care at community based primary care practice (CBPCP) models are feasible and acceptable (Meredith et al., 2021). Therefore, multifactorial interventions that focus on several factors that contribute to the inequities are believed to be most effective for mental health inequities. The starting points (or assumptions) that this team is based on are grounded in the existing evidence; they can change as more evidence is discovered.
Collaborative Role of the Interdisciplinary Team
Having a skilled interprofessional care team in place will be important in bridging the care gap that is felt by Black adults when accessing primary care services. The whole spectrum of care (assessment, initiation of treatment, reimbursements and barriers to referrals) models within collaborative care are effective at bridging this gap when compared to single component intervention models. A multi-health-trust team (nurses, primary care physicians (PCP), social workers, psychiatrists and community health workers (CHW)) has a unique and complementary contribution to make to patient centered and holistic health care services.
Explanatory models, sociocultural barriers, and treatment options have been the targets of quality improvement programs with African Americans that have been found to be helpful in improving depression outcome (Mariman et al., 2023). There is a greater opportunity to build a linkage between services provided in the clinical setting and community services with the help of a social worker and/or community health worker. Fabricating every patient’s culturally responsive room will enable the interprofessional team to make the room patient-centred, promoting the patient’s trust and enhancing their engagement with the treatment process.
Challenges in Team Collaboration
Interprofessional team working is crucial – however, the ability to work interprofessionally is a real challenge. One challenge that has been identified in previous research is the lack of a uniform cultural competency training for health care providers that work with patients who are Black and/or members of other ethnic minority groups (Butler Hospital DEI Committee, 2023). Other obstacles to interprofessional therapies are low levels of team cohesion because of uncertainty surrounding team members’ roles, lack of team communication and varying team member clinical views. Barriers to interprofessional healthcare delivery are often more complex for people of colour, including: problems accessing information, stigma or embarrassment seeking help from certain healthcare providers and difficulty accessing a provider with similar backgrounds/experiences to themselves. To surmount these challenges, teams will need to be continuing to educate and train team members; have very clear lines of communication, and have culturally responsive service delivery protocols in place and in use.
Evaluation of Evidence and Positions Supporting the Team's Approach
There are numerous studies and organizational position papers supporting the team’s strategy, but we’ve highlighted the following two which clearly support that. When it comes to access to and outcomes of health and mental health services, data from the Kaiser Family Foundation shows that there are disparities among racial groups. The fact that people of color are underdiagnosed or undertreated for mental health issues likely accounts for why there are higher rates of suicide and drug overdoses among people of color, than White individuals. This is evidence that supports the systematic, screening and early intervention through primary care. Community based services that integrate mental health services into primary healthcare (PHC) have been effective in engaging people into treatment and clinical outcomes for people who receive these services (NAACP, 2025).
There are strategies in place to involve the community and opportunities for culturly based interventions with this population. The reduction of stigmas related to different treatments, and clinical care of the mentally sick person in the community, were the outcomes of culturlly competent interventions. Also, collaborative care’s added value to help racial-ethnic minority, low-income primary care populations become engaged and improve clinical outcomes has helped to make this model scalable. The evidence that is available all points to the team’s practice being evidence based, ethical and employing an interprofessional, culturally competent approach to treatment.
Knowledge Gaps and Areas of Uncertainty
Improve the range of each knowledge gap and area of uncertainty.
Research to date has revealed areas of knowledge gap which will hinder the development of improved quality evidence-based guidance. Culturally Relevant Collaborative Care (CRC) research highlights the importance of further research to better understand the best ways to implement these interventions in the community within diverse cultures. In particular, the literature and studies on culturally adapted care have not provided the answers to which culturally adapted interventions are most effective with each of the racial/ethnic subgroups of Black Americans. Moreover, any between-group differences (regardless of education, immigration or gender status of the person) highlights the need to develop culturally specific interventions to address each of the subgroups within a given racial population (not just the ethnicity or type of the person). These gaps in knowledge need to be filled with new research to design interventions that are based on research and accurate.
Contrary Evidence and Position
But there are different perspectives among experts as to how best and most well to adapt and implement a culturally sensitive intervention that might be most effective and/or scalable with this population. Some feel that targeted clinical interventions would make a greater difference to the community, while others feel that systemic changes (not clinical but instead increased access to health insurance, a health care workforce that is diverse, etc) would have a greater effect than targeted clinical changes. 12.7% of all working-age Black Americans had no health insurance in 2021 compared to 7.5% of White Americans. This puts many people out of reach of care as their expenses exceed the care they need and/or getting to an office is difficult. In fact, those opposed to customized cultural changes think that there’s a greater chance for cultural change to happen on a larger scale at the population level than through policy.
Besides the above, there is the mental health stigma of black communities that must be dealt with through a more comprehensive approach than just a targeted clinical approach. Inequities in health outcomes can also lead to negative attitudes, beliefs or knowledge about mental illness (Mental Illness Stigma), which in turn can be a root cause of people’s issues when trying to use a mental health service (Romdhane, et al., 2022). Implementing interventions that have been found to be effective in one community to reduce stigma will not always be effective in African Americans and it is important to use interventions that specifically target African Americans to reduce stigma. The fact that the views are conflicting leads to an assumption that the clinical level level of intervention is adequate and that there is no need for other community and/or policy level interventions to make a difference.
Impartial Response to Conflicting Data and Perspectives
The group feels there’s good issues regarding the conflict of opinions around structural nature of mental health care – we need to find a better way of dealing with this conflict. Instead of the “philosophy” of opposing structural arguments, they will incorporate aspects of the clinical and systemic components of the team’s work plan, since both will need to go hand-in-hand. Targeted outreach and educational programs, having more diverse mental health care providers and increasing the cultural competency of providers are essential in reducing the mental health care disparities. These more general strategies will be brought into the frame and the team’s evolution will be more all-encompassing and responsive towards every aspect of the problem.
Conclusion
Many Black/African American adults suffer from depression – and this gap is a sign of a significant and fixable gap in health care. Many studies have found that widespread structural racism, cultural stigma of mental illness and misguided barriers to care among Black/African American people in the health care system have a negative effect on the ability to adequately diagnose and treat depression. Implementing interprofessional, culturally-competent approaches to all types of use of collaborative care models is one of the best ways that these can be treated within community based primary care. We have a team that works tirelessly to develop a realistic, thorough and equitable framework which is informed by multiple evidence and perspectives.
References For NURS FPX 6026 Assessment 1
Blackmore, M. A., Patel, U. B., Stein, D., Carleton, K. E., Ricketts, S. M., Ansari, A. M., & Chung, H. (2022). Collaborative care for low-income patients from racial-ethnic minority groups in primary care: Engagement and clinical outcomes. Psychiatric Services, 73(8). https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ps.202000924
Bolt, A. (2023, November 2). Why depression is worse and lasts longer in Black Americans. WebMD. https://www.webmd.com/depression/racial-disparity-treatment-resistant-depression
Butler Hospital DEI Committee. (2023, February 1). How can we eliminate mental health care barriers in Black communities? Care New England. https://www.carenewengland.org/blog/how-can-we-eliminate-mental-health-care-barriers-in-black-communities
Campagna, V., & Riley, L. L. (2025). Interprofessional collaboration as a best practice across the care continuum. Professional Case Management, 30(3). https://doi.org/10.1097/ncm.0000000000000793
Mariman, A., Vermeir, P., Csabai, M., Weiland, A., Stegers-Jager, K., Vermeir, R., & Vogelaers, D. (2023). Education on medically unexplained symptoms: A systematic review with a focus on cultural diversity and migrants. European Journal of Medical Research, 28(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40001-023-01105-7
Meredith, L. S., Wong, E., Osilla, K. C., Sanders, M., Tebeka, M. G., Han, B., Williamson, S. L., & Carton, T. W. (2021). Trauma-informed collaborative care for African American primary care patients in federally qualified health centers. Medical Care, 60(3), 232–239. https://doi.org/10.1097/mlr.0000000000001681
NAACP. (2025, January 30). Addressing the mental and behavioral health care needs of the Black community. https://naacp.org/resources/addressing-mental-and-behavioral-health-care-needs-black-community
Panchal, N., Hill, L., Artiga, S., & Hamel, L. (2024, May 23). Racial and ethnic disparities in mental health care: Findings from the KFF Survey of Racism, Discrimination and Health. KFF. https://www.kff.org/racial-equity-and-health-policy/racial-and-ethnic-disparities-in-mental-health-care-findings-from-the-kff-survey-of-racism-discrimination-and-health/
Romdhane, F. F., Jahrami, H., Stambouli, M., Alhuwailah, A., Helmy, M., Shuwiekh, H., Fadel, M., Radwan, E., Saquib, J., Nazmus Saquib, Fawaz, M., Btissame Zarrouq, Naser, A. Y., Obeid, S., Souheil Hallit, Saleh, M., Haider, S., Suhad Daher-Nashif, M. Lahmer, & Manal Badrasawi. (2022). Cross-cultural comparison of mental illness stigma and help-seeking attitudes: A multinational population-based study from 16 Arab countries and 10,036 individuals. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 58(4), 641–656. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-022-02403-x
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Minority Health. (2025). Mental health and Black/African Americans. https://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/mental-and-behavioral-health-blackafrican-americans
Yelton, B., Friedman, D. B., Noblet, S., Lohman, M. C., Arent, M. A., Macauda, M. M., Sakhuja, M., & Leith, K. H. (2022). Social determinants of health and depression among African American adults: A scoping review of current research. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(3), e1498. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19031498
FAQs
Q1. What is the purpose of NURS FPX 6026 Assessment 1?
The purpose of NURS FPX 6026 Assessment 1 is the examination of position papers that target vulnerable populations and assessing the effectiveness of health policies and advocacy strategies.
Q2. What should be included in the analysis of a position paper?
In case of position papers, elements like introduction, arguments, evidences, proposed health policies, their effect on vulnerable populations, and nurses’ efforts for providing equal access to health services need to be included.
Q3. How do I identify a vulnerable population for this assessment?
Some of the examples of the chosen vulnerable population could include poor patients, elderly patients, homeless patients, ethnic/racial patients, and chronically ill patients facing discrimination in terms of health care.
Q4. Why is evidence-based research important in this assignment?
Including the evidences from the evidence-based articles supports one’s arguments on the effectiveness of the policies and brings out some health care issues at present.
Q5. How can professional academic support help with NURS FPX 6026 Assessment 1?
A student will be able to receive professional help in searching for literature, citing the references in APA format, analyzing critically, and avoiding plagiarism.