Hispanic Health initiative: Implementation of a BSN honors program

To address the increasing diversity in the community, along with the concomitant unmet health care needs of minority populations, and in an effort to prepare students to work with ethnically and culturally diverse populations, the College of Nursing received funding through a HRSA grant to establish the Hispanic Health Initiative (HHI). One component of this grant is an honors program for undergraduate nursing students, which provides them with intensive opportunities to work with women and children in a predominantly Hispanic community. Students are introduced to the Hispanic community during the second semester of their program, and continue working with this project until graduation. The purpose of this presentation is to share experiences and outcomes of the component of the project that integrates undergraduate nursing students into the Hispanic community through the Mom's Morning Out program. To gain insight into the needs of the Hispanic community, students collected demographic and health related data about this population, and interviewed the mothers to determine their needs. Based on these data, students developed a variety of interventions, which they completed over the course of the three semesters. Data for the HHI honors project were collected through student logs in which they were required to write about their experiences. Through analysis of the log data, the following themes related to student learning have been identified: 1) development of cultural knowledge, 2) overcoming language barriers, and 3) becoming involved and connected to the community. These themes will be expanded and discussed in this presentation.