A Strategy for Strengthening: Implementation of the Capabilities Opportunities Assessment Tool for the Public Health Workforce.

Context: Strengthening the national public health infrastructure is crucial to ensure provision of necessary public health services in all jurisdictions. Public health agencies and their governing bodies need an evidence-based understanding of workforces' capabilities to operationalize this effort.

Program: The Capabilities Opportunities Assessment Tool for the Public Health Workforce (COAT-PH) is an assessment of workforce foundational capabilities (FCs), based on the Foundational Public Health Services (FPHS) framework.

Teaching nursing within a population health context: From concept to exemplars.

As researchers in the health sciences improve their understanding of the underlying causes of poor health to include non-medical factors, nursing practice must expand and adapt to enable nurses to effectively contribute to population health improvement. The concept of population health has been incorporated into the current American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) The Essentials: Core Competencies for Professional Nursing Education (2021) as a set of competencies for nurses at entry and advanced levels. This article provides a description of these competencies, and exemplars of how to include them meaningfully in nursing curricula at the entry level.

Measuring Bachelor of Science in Nursing competencies in public/population health.

Nurses have a long history of practice in public health. More recently basic population health knowledge and skills are being required across all nursing practice settings. To prepare nurses for this practice nursing education has long included public or community health nursing (PHN) content and skills as part of prelicensure education at the baccalaureate level and above.

Behind Closed Doors: A Thematic Analysis of Diabetes Community Health Worker Home Visit Content.

The present work studies how community health workers (CHWs) perform the role of educator and how this relates to the implementation of other CHW roles, skills, and qualities. Prior studies on this topic have relied on interviews or focus groups rather than analysis of CHW interactions. We conducted a thematic analysis of 24 transcripts of conversations occurring between CHWs and participants during home visits as part of the Mexican American Trial of Community Health Workers, a randomized controlled trial that improved clinical outcomes among low-income Mexican American adults with type 2 diabetes.

A critical gap: Advanced practice nurses focused on the public's health.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for nurse leaders who "embrace the interconnection" between medicine and public health. The inequitable impact of COVID-19 on people of color demonstrates the importance of applying expertise from nursing practice and public health systems to work with communities and other professions on complex health issues. Yet, despite a clear need for improved population health, educational programs designed to produce Advanced Public Health Nurses, with skills to address complex system changes, have become increasingly scarce.

Applying the Chronic Care Model to Improve Patient Activation at a Nurse-Managed Student-Run Free Clinic for Medically Underserved People.

This article describes a practice change intended to improve patient activation, also described as self-care management, in a sample of uninsured and underinsured patients with one or more chronic diseases who received care at a nurse-managed student-run free clinic project. Chronic diseases are the leading causes of death and disability in the United States. Individuals with chronic illnesses may be uninsured or underinsured and often do not receive adequate medical management, resulting in complications and unnecessary hospitalizations.

Using a Community Preventive Services Task Force Recommendation to Prevent and Reduce Intimate Partner Violence and Sexual Violence.

Intimate partner violence (IPV) and sexual violence (SV) are preventable public health problems affecting millions in the United States. The Community Preventive Services Task Force (CPSTF), an independent panel of experts that develops evidence-based recommendations based on rigorous systematic reviews, recommends interventions that aim to prevent or reduce IPV and SV among youth aged 12-24 years. Decision makers can use these findings to select interventions appropriate for their populations, identify additional areas for research, and justify funding requests.

Evidence of Public Health Nursing Effectiveness: A Realist Review.

Objectives: The purpose of this realist review was to examine PHN interventions and their outcomes during the period preceding the Affordable Care Act (1990-2010), to determine what types of interventions demonstrated effectiveness, and whether these were related to target population or setting.

Design And Sample: The review focused on PHN interventions with data support documented over 20 years. A search of the published literature using CINHAL, PubMed, and ancestry methods resulted in 64 articles meeting the search criteria.

Embracing a competency-based specialty curriculum for community-based nursing roles.

The Quad Council competencies for public health nursing (PHN) provide guidance in developing curricula at both the generalist and specialist level. However, these competencies are based on nursing roles in traditional public health agencies and community/public health is defined more broadly than official agency practice. The question arises as to whether community-based specialties require largely the same knowledge and skill set as PHN.

The Quad Council practice competencies for public health nursing.

This article describes the most recent efforts by the Quad Council of Public Health Nursing organizations to review and revise the competencies for PHN practice, and highlights the implications of these competencies for practice, education, and research. The Quad Council is a coalition of four nursing organizations with a focus on public health nursing and includes the Association of Community Health Nursing Educators; the Association of Public Health Nursing (known prior to July 1, 2012 as the Association of State and Territorial Directors of Nursing); the Public Health Nursing section of the American Public Health Association; and the Council on Economics and Practice of the American Nurses' Association. The Quad Council competencies are based on the Council on Linkages competencies for public health professionals and were designed to ensure that public health nursing fits in the domain of public health science and practice.

Mexican American trial of community health workers: a randomized controlled trial of a community health worker intervention for Mexican Americans with type 2 diabetes mellitus.

Objectives: We assessed whether community health workers (CHWs) could improve glycemic control among Mexican Americans with diabetes.

Methods: We recruited 144 Mexican Americans with type 2 diabetes between January 2006 and September 2008 into the single-blinded, randomized controlled Mexican American Trial of Community Health Workers (MATCH) and followed them for 2 years. Participants were assigned to either a CHW intervention, delivering self-management training through 36 home visits over 2 years, or a bilingual control newsletter delivering the same information on the same schedule.

Home asthma triggers: barriers to asthma control in Chicago Puerto Rican children.

We sought objectively to measure, summarize, and contextualize the asthma triggers found in the homes of urban high-risk Puerto Rican children and adolescents with asthma in Chicago. Data were from the baseline home assessments of Project CURA. Research assistants interviewed caregivers, conducted a home visual inspection, and collected saliva samples for cotinine analysis.

The Mexican-American Trial of Community Health workers (MATCH): design and baseline characteristics of a randomized controlled trial testing a culturally tailored community diabetes self-management intervention.

Objectives: Community Health Workers (CHWs) have been recommended to reduce diabetes disparities, but few robust trials of this approach have been conducted. Limitations of prior studies include: unspecified a priori outcomes; lack of blinded outcome assessments; high participant attrition rates; and lack of attention to intervention fidelity. These limitations reflect challenges in balancing methodologic rigor with the needs of vulnerable populations.

Recruitment of Mexican American adults for an intensive diabetes intervention trial.

Objective: Effective behavioral diabetes interventions for Mexican Americans are needed. Our study focused on efforts to recruit Mexican American adults for a trial testing a diabetes community health worker (CHW) self-management intervention.

Design: Behavioral randomized controlled trial, community-based participatory research approach.

Project MATCH: training for a promotora intervention.

Purpose: Adequate training and support are critical for community health workers (promotoras de salud in Spanish) to work effectively. Current literature on promotora training is limited by a focus on promotoras' knowledge and satisfaction immediately after training. The relevance of training to subsequent work performance and the need for ongoing training are rarely addressed.

Community/public health nursing practice leaders' views of the doctorate of nursing practice.

Objectives: This paper presents thoughts of practice leaders in the community/public health nursing (C/PHN) specialty on advanced nursing practice (ANP) and the necessary educational preparation for such practice.

Design And Sample: Practice leaders were engaged in conversations specifically focused on the Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) as preparation for ANP in their specialties, and asked to consider the benefits of, and challenges to, this educational program.

Measures And Results: The resulting remarks were then assessed for themes by the interviewers and these are presented along with thoughts on the future of education for ANP.

Creating diversity in a baccalaureate nursing program: a case study.

Minority groups in the United States experience disparity in the health care services they receive and in their health related outcomes. Minority healthcare providers are more likely to serve minority under-served populations, thus addressing this healthcare disparity in an effective culturally competent manner (Robert Wood Johnson 2005; Sullivan, 2004). The purpose of the project was to increase the number of racial and ethnic minority students who are successfully recruited and admitted to the nursing program at Hope College in Holland, Michigan.

Options for sustaining school-based health centers.

Several methods exist for financing and sustaining operations of school-based health centers (SBHCs). Promising sources of funds include private grants, federal grants, and state funding. Recently, federal regulation changes mandated that federal funding specifically for SBHCs go only to SBHCs affiliated with a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC).

Outcome effectiveness of community health workers: an integrative literature review.

Community health workers (CHWs) are promoted as a mechanism to increase community involvement in health promotion efforts, despite little consensus about the role and its effectiveness. This article reviews the databased literature on CHW effectiveness, which indicates preliminary support for CHWs in increasing access to care, particularly in underserved populations. There are a smaller number of studies documenting outcomes in the areas of increased health knowledge, improved health status outcomes, and behavioral changes, with inconclusive results.