Week 3 – Demographic Site Analysis- Planning and Marketing for Health Services Organizations

The demographic site analysis provides a summary of a specific market area. For this paper component, your team will choose a specific geographic area (locality, ZIP code, or census tract) and prepare a demographic profile of the people who live in that area from data available at the website of the U.S. Census Bureau (www.census.gov (Links to an external site.)) or another reputable demographic sources (for example, the local Chamber of Commerce, a state hospital association, or another government source). For online courses, teams will agree upon a specific market to analyze and prepare a profile of that market. For blended courses, teams will analyze and prepare a profile of the local market. This profile should provide specific demographic information about the population, including relevant facts and figures. For example, your team might include information on population growth, gender, race and ethnicity, education level, marital status, age ranges, or income ranges. If available, your team might also include data regarding health characteristics of the market’s population. Data are sometimes available from local or state health departments or from national health registries (such as the CDC). Your team is encouraged to include graphs or charts that help describe the demographics of the geographic area (at least one is required). Be sure to keep track as you go of the sources for any graphs, charts or images used in the the paper and later in the presentation. You will need to cite them in your paper and on your presentation slides, and keeping a list now will save you the work of recreating the information later.
Your team will also include a market profile – a brief overview of the healthcare organizations currently serving this market. Briefly identify and describe the hospitals, clinics, or other healthcare service providers in this area.
After preparing the demographic and market profile, your team will then analyze potential healthcare needs that one might anticipate in this geographic area. The analysis should address the following questions.

What does this demographic profile tell your team about potential healthcare utilization and health behaviors?
What does the profile tell your team about the needed healthcare services or products?
Are all of these needs currently being met by the existing healthcare organizations? If not, which needs represent a market opportunity?

Use Google Docs (https://www.google.com/docs/about/) (Links to an external site.) to collaboratively write the paper and as a team, and invite your instructor as a contributor so she/he can view the progress of the paper online. The length of the demographic site analysis should be 600 to 800 words. Your team should cite all sources in APA style, both in-text and at the end of the document. Your team is required to have at least three sources to support this component of the Course Paper. Each member of the team must download a copy of the Google Doc and save it in MS Word for submission to their own Dropbox for grading.
This assignment is due in Week 3. The Course Paper assignments build upon each other and are compiled into the complete Course Project paper, due in Week 7.