Sustaining a nurse-led community partnership to promote environmental justice.

The Westlawn Partnership for a Healthier Environment (WPHE) is a longstanding group of community stakeholders that was formed over a decade ago to identify, prioritize, and address environmental health (EH) concerns in a low-income, predominantly African American, urban neighborhood, which faces a disproportionate burden of EH risks, particularly asthma. Launched by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee College of Nursing, which established a nurse-managed health center within the community 30 years ago, WPHE utilized the Protocol of Assessing Community Excellence in Environment Health methodology to develop, implement, and sustain the partnership. WPHE implemented programs for Healthy Homes, Healthy Day Cares, and bicycling, and made system and infrastructure changes within the community to address the top identified EH concerns: indoor and outdoor air pollution, mold exposure, access to safe and healthy food, and pesticide exposure.

Exploring Anatomic Variants to Enhance Anatomy Teaching: Musculus Sternalis.

The opportunity to encounter and appreciate the range of human variation in anatomic structures-and its potential impact on related structures, function, and treatment-is one of the chief benefits of cadaveric dissection for students in clinical preprofessional programs. The dissection lab is also where students can examine unusual anatomic variants that may not be included in their textbooks, lab manuals, or other course materials. For students specializing in physical medicine, awareness and understanding of muscle variants has a practical relevance to their preparations for clinical practice.

Using group model building to understand factors that influence childhood obesity in an urban environment.

Background: Despite increased attention, conventional views of obesity are based upon individual behaviors, and children and parents living with obesity are assumed to be the primary problem solvers. Instead of focusing exclusively on individual reduction behaviors for childhood obesity, greater focus should be placed on better understanding existing community systems and their effects on obesity. The Milwaukee Childhood Obesity Prevention Project is a community-based coalition established to develop policy and environmental change strategies to impact childhood obesity in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Emergency anaphylaxis at school.

Nurses in the Milwaukee Public Schools implement a lifesaving response protocol.

Design of a system for vision screening and follow-up eye care for children in Milwaukee Public Schools.

Vision problems affect many school age children, while only few of children are adequately screened for vision problems. The design of an information system supporting vision screening and follow-up eye care for Milwaukee Public Schools is discussed in this paper, which includes wireless data collection and web-based data management. The implementation of the system is ongoing.