Incorporating Concepts of Population Health within the Nursing Curriculum
Abstract
Sharon K. Byrne and Katie Hoovan
The goal of Population Health is to improve health and wellness in patient populations. Disparities can negatively impact individual/family or community subsets that have experienced access, resource or socioeconomic obstacles to health and wellness. As such, it is important to understand the determinants that impact health outcomes at the population level. Family centric nursing in both the educational and practice arena can broaden its impact through incorporating concepts from population health to enhance the well-being of persons across the lifespan in local community and broader global settings. The Department of Nursing at one state college has made an effort to incorporate Population Health and its tenets into the curriculum. Grant funding has supported strategies utilized in the transition. The strategies include, but are not limited to; educating faculty, students, and affiliated clinical settings and their providers about issues involved in determining population health; utilizing existing research evidence or best practice interventions in the planning and delivery of care; increasing inter professional collaboration; mobilizing existing community resources to achieve better health outcomes; and the use of informatics and technology. Lessons learned in developing knowledge, establishing learning objects, and offering clinical experiences that promote competencies in population-based health care will be shared. Highlights will include a discussion of learning experiences of nursing students involved in an academic-practice partnership within an underserved urban area and a global health medical mission with a NGO to address population health disparities in a resource poor environment.