Access to health education for women in correctional facilities

Health information and health care system literacy is a key to maintaining personal health and illness prevention. Incarcerated women are a vulnerable population that is in dire need of basic health information and life long personal health skills. These vulnerable women have unique health education and health care needs that may not be met while incarcerated. While health care is available, health information is delivered as needed and usually on a one to one basis. Faculty, health care staff and students have collaborated for several years in a service learning project to develop a health education and life skills model program that serves the needs of these incarcerated women. The model curriculum was developed to address the unique health education needs of women in a correctional facility.

The step by step process employed by the clinical faculty, the correctional health care staff and the senior community health nursing students is thoroughly described. This continuing service learning collaboration addresses the health education and life skills needs of the client while considering the unique dynamics of the correctional facility's organizational structure, the demographics of the incarcerated women and the desired outcomes of the intervention model. The standardized health education model for personal and general health has become a guide for nursing student's involved in service learning and the health care staff.