Public health nurses (PHNs) use many interventions to prevent illness and promote the health of populations. Unfortunately, generating evidence regarding PHN practice is not explicitly identified as a research priority area of the major national funding agencies. Nor has PHN, as a profession, had a strong enough research agenda to drive practice improvement on a population-level and to drive fu...

Family home visiting is a widely accepted strategy used with disadvantaged families to mitigate the effects of poverty. However, gaps persist in knowledge of effective intervention approaches for home visiting relative to specific client risks such as parenting and psychosocial problems. The purpose of this study was to inductively create clusters from electronic health records of 484 public he...

OBJECTIVES This study describes a comparison of the values and beliefs foundational to community nursing practice in Norway with the Cornerstones of Public Health Nursing based on public health nursing practice in the United States. DESIGN AND SAMPLE Methods included a review of the literature and focus groups to determine primary beliefs and values foundational to nursing practice in family,...

Student health visitors led a Mini-MEND project for families with young children as part of their public health nursing course. The project gave a framework for the students and staff members from the children's centre to stimulate an awareness of health needs and facilitate health enhancing activities in terms of healthy eating and parenting. Reflection on the initiative identified application...

A review of the historical evolution of the concept of community health diagnosis in nursing identifies sources of ambiguity that have impeded making the goals and values of community health nursing operational. Refinements of meaning in the conceptualization of the community health diagnosis that focus upon the community as the primary level of analysis are suggested. Implications of this reco...

This is the last in a series of reports to share key learnings from my 2005 sabbatical, when I took a three-month journey through Scandinavia, Western Europe, Ireland and the United Kingdom to observe innovation in nursing services delivery. This report will focus on quality systems, interprofessional education and innovation. Many of the countries I visited were doing creative work in advancin...

Attrition in the public health nursing work force combined with a lack of faculty to teach public health prompted development of a "long-distance" learning project. Practicing associate degree nurses enrolled in an online course in population-based practice worked with experienced public health nurse "e-mentors." Student-mentor pairs worked through course assignments, shared public health nursi...