School Nurses' Experiences and Perceptions of Healthy Eating School Environments.

School nurses provide health promotion and health services within schools, as healthy children have a greater potential for optimal learning. One of the school nurses' role is in encouraging healthy eating and increasing the availability of fruits and vegetables in the school. The purpose of this study was to explore and describe school nurses' perceptions of their role in promoting increased fruit and vegetable consumption in the school setting.

Influencing policy development: the whirling dervish of the autism in-home program.

The elimination of a state supported autism in-home program due to budgetary constraints is used to illustrate how nurses working with grassroots and legislative groups can influence policy, and how policy, in turn, determines the availability of treatment and services. Within 24 hours of its elimination, parents of children with autism and key stakeholders mounted a statewide advocacy effort to restore an autism in-home program that researchers had shown to be effective Lovaas, O. I.