 | The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA |
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| The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA |
Shawn M. Kneipp, PhD, ARNP, College of Nursing, University of Florida, PO Box 100187, Gainesville, FL 32610-0187, 352-392-9207, skneipp@nursing.ufl.edu
One of the most difficult aspects of improving the health and well being of communities is integrating research findings that demonstrate effective interventions into public health/nursing practice. For example, even for those interventions that are proven effective, far too often no resources (material, financial, political) are provided to translate the research into practice on a realistic level. Local governments are often expected to fund either the initial implementation or maintain community-level interventions on their own. It is ironic that while “building capacity” is often one of the objectives of community intervention programs, this “capacity” rarely includes the resources needed for adequately implementing or sustaining them.
The purpose of this presentation is to (1) review the extant literature on public health nursing interventions, and (2) provide examples of effective interventions that have either not been implemented or diluted to the extent that they are no longer effective. Dissemination of intervention research findings that are intended for use by public health nurses are numerous in the literature, yet documentation of their implementation as well as their ability to be sustained is limited. Specific examples of public health nursing interventions in the areas of maternal child health and hypertension control among African American men, among others, will be discussed to highlight the challenges of moving from research to practice. Lastly, the influence of deficient public health funding on implementation challenges will be discussed.
Learning Objectives:
Keywords: Social Justice, Interventions
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.