Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #116010

Ann Backus, MS, HSPH NIEHS Center for Environmental Health, Harvard School of Public Health, SPH1-1410, 665 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA 02115, (617) 432-3327, abackus@hohp.harvard.edu, Stephanie M. Chalupka, EdD, RNCS, CETN, Department of Nursing, University of Massachusetts Lowell, 1 University Avenue, Lowell, MA 01854, and Jeanne Beauchamp Hewitt, PhD, RN, School of Nursing, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, PO Box 413, Miwaukee, WI 53122.

Responding to the 1995 IOM report, Nursing, Health and the Environment, Stephanie Chalupka, Ed.D, A.P.R.N, now Director of Nursing at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, collaborated with AAOHN, ATSDR, and with Dr. Susan Korrick of the Harvard School of Public Health to develop The Core Curriculum in Environmental Health. Train-the-trainer sessions were held and scores of nurse educators at undergraduate and graduate levels were trained on this curriculum. The Core Curriculum is now available on-line as a five module course for CEUs through AAOHN, www.aaohn.org

In the summer of 2005, a second tier of training was held at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) that used a site visit to a Superfund site as the focal point. In addition to the site visit, HSPH and UW Milwaukee faculty and others presented on topics related to the site such as disease clusters, toxic organic compounds, GIS as a tool for community mapping, and the role of the public health nurse practitioner.

Participants in the training conference had been encouraged to bring a 2-3 member team to the conference. Teams could be from a single institution or agency, or from multiple units within a state including local and state government. Time was set aside for networking among nurses both within and across teams. Participants developed post-conference networking guidelines in order to fulfill an expectation of the conference that the environmental health education would be utilized in academic nursing and public health settings.

Learning Objectives:

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• Participants will be able to discuss the benefits of using a site visit as a focal point for environmental health education for nurse educators and public health practitioners. (
• Participants will be able to describe how to tailor environmental health education to the role of the public health nurse. (
• Participants will be able to discuss how cross-institutional collaboration and teaming in nursing education can enhance the development of environmental health education networks for nurse educators and practitioners.

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.