LI Course
CE Hours: 1.5 contact hours (QUAD Council Only)

Partnership: The Quad Council of Public Health Nursing Organizations, which consists of the American Public Health Association, Public Health Nursing Section, the Association of Community Health Nursing Educators, the American Nurses Association, Congress on Nursing Practice and Economics, and the Association of State and Territorial Directors of Nursing.

Statement of Purpose and Institute Overview: The purpose of this course is to identify the implications of health care reform on public health nursing practice, education, policy and research and strategies to move a national public health nursing agenda forward. Public health nurses have a vital role in helping realize the objectives set forth in the 2010 Affordable Care Act. A number of barriers prevent nurses from being able to respond effectively to rapidly changing health care settings and an evolving health care system. These barriers need to be overcome to ensure that nurses are well- positioned to lead change and advance health. In 2008, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) and the IOM launched a two-year initiative to respond to the need to assess and transform the nursing profession. Their key messages were: 1) nurses should practice to the full extent of their education and training; 2) nurses should achieve higher levels of education and training through an improved education system that promotes seamless academic progression; 3) nurses should be full partners, with physicians and other health care professionals, in redesigning health care in the united states and 4) effective workforce planning and policy making require better data collection and information infrastructure. The health care and public health systems are evolving and public health nurses should play a fundamental role in this transformation. This session will outline implications of the Affordable Care Act and the IOM Report for the public health nursing specialty and opportunities for public health nurses to influence the evolving health care and public health systems. These will include expanding their role to take on broader policy challenges; establishing, maintaining, and strengthening community partnerships; foster team-based approaches to complex issues; utilizing more evidence-based prevention strategies, increasing technology fluency to retrieve, share and mine data on public health nursing outcomes; increasing more strategies to address the social determinants of health in public health nursing programs; and increasing public health nursing contributions to quality improvement and accreditation activities. The session will conclude with participant discussion and critique of public health nursing practices that are evolving in response to health reform.

Session Objectives: By the end of the session, the participant will be able to: 1. Identify one public health nursing implication for each of the five IOM Future of Nursing recommendations 2. Describe two contributions to the evolving health system that are unique to public health nursing 3. List two best practice/emerging practice models of public health nursing that have developed in response to health reform

CE Credits: Medical (CME), Health Education (CHES), Nursing (CNE), Public Health (CPH) , Masters Certified Health Education Specialist (MCHES)