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Posted 10-8-98
A new center at Case Western Reserve University's Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing will help prepare more nurses to improve health care for children and families by focusing on them as population groups rather than just treating them individually. This may increase the impact nurses can have on children's health by reaching the community about health risks, prevention, and treatment, while positioning nurses to have a greater influence on public health policies that affect children.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Maternal and Child Health Bureau has awarded the Bolton School $200,000 over four years to establish the Center for Excellence in Population-Based Pediatric Nursing.
The center will concentrate on educating pediatric and family nurse-practitioners who can advance children's health care at the population level, and to prepare nurse-practitioner faculty members at the Ph.D. level.
For example, these nurses could evaluate the effects that state and federal legislation might have on the health care of children and recommend and implement strategies to address these effects. Donna Dowling, CWRU assistant professor of nursing, is the center's director.
"By intervening with a population in the community we can reach more people with our message and have a broader impact on advancing health care for children than we could treating one individual at a time," said JoAnne Youngblut, associate dean for research at the Bolton School and the initial project director.
The center is part of the Bolton School's new Sarah Cole Hirsh Institute for Best Nursing Practices Based on Evidence. The institute will gather and synthesize evidence about care of particular patient groups or problems, and serve as a national repository regarding the best nursing practices for those groups or problems.
Changes in access to health care, payment for services, and welfare reform initiatives have increased the need for population-based health care services, according to Youngblut.
Another contributing factor is that improved treatment has led to longer survival for more premature infants and children with a variety of chronic illnesses. These children often have complex needs for primary care and treatment for their recurring illnesses, making them and their families vulnerable to changes in health care and reimbursement.
The grant will help support a new population-based maternal-child health course to be offered University-wide beginning in spring 1999. It will cover current health policy issues related to children, state, and federal child health programs, and pending legislation, as well as population-based assessment and intervention.
The idea is to prepare pediatric and family nurse-practitioners to understand how community or legislative changes affect children, and to think about community needs in relation to children, according to Youngblut.
"Children cannot advocate for themselves, especially disadvantaged, medically high risk and vulnerable children," Youngblut said. "They need to have someone besides their parents to look out for them."
Each year, two M.S.N. students at the Bolton School will receive tuition support to take organizational theory and health policy courses and also the new course. Three N.D. students will receive tuition support for the new course only. Every two years, the center will help one M.S.N.-prepared faculty member who is a pediatric or family nurse-practitioner to pursue a Ph.D. degree at the school by reducing the teaching load to complete doctoral course work.
Faculty and students in the center will publish 15 manuscripts annually on pediatric research findings and practice. The center also will offer two workshops per year on population-based child health services for nurse-practitioners in the community to advance the knowledge of health services for families and children. The first workshop is planned for the fall semester.
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