Hopkins community nursing showcases public health principles

Mar 8 2009

Public Health Week, April 7-13, annually highlights health promotion, disease prevention, and early intervention, but for the faculty and students at the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing (JHUSON), every week is public health week.

Hopkins nursing faculty and students are part of a health care revolution changing the lens through which health and illness are viewed, moving from the microscope of acute individual illness to the larger prism of community public health. The JHUSON promotes a vision that looks beyond today's illness treatment system toward a health care system and—working through the SON Department of Community Public Health—ensures the concepts of health promotion and illness prevention are taught and thrive. According to Department Chair and Professor Phyllis Sharps, PhD, RN, CNE, FAAN, “Community-based public health education and promotion have been central to nursing for generations. And at last, the importance of this work has been growing in health care policy and programs. It's an approach that will be good for everyone's health, not just their illnesses, and nursing is at the heart of the transformation.” Through its community nursing centers, the Department and the School create partnerships that build health and hope in urban Baltimore communities and offer tomorrow's nurses life-changing public health-centered experiences.

Getting Safe, Keeping Safe: Public Heath and Intimate Partner Violence—Helping women who are victims of intimate partner violence (IPV or what once was called “domestic violence”) is one of the most critical steps a community-based nurse can take to promote the public health. Unchecked, IPV results in injury, even death, among its adult victims; emotional repercussions can resonate for years. Adults aren't the only victims; so are their young children, many of whom develop serious long-term physical and behavioral problems. Nurses can help avoid further damage and promote healthier lives by working with IPV victims and their children as early as possible.

The challenge today is identifying the very best ways to reach out to and assist abused mothers and their young children and to put those methods into practice nationwide. With the help of a $3.5 million grant from the National Institute of Nursing Research, JHUSON faculty member Phyllis Sharps, PhD, RN, CNE, FAAN, aims to respond to that challenge by assessing the effectiveness of the Domestic Violence Enhanced Visitation Program (DOVE), a community-based intervention using structured one-on-one home visitations with nurses to help break the cycle of domestic violence. Working with a test population of 360 mothers and infants, the program works to increase women's awareness of IPV, recognize the dangerousness of their relationships, and identify options to improve safety. While outcome data for DOVE are months away, Sharps is hopeful: "We know home visitation works," says Sharps. "Through this program we work with women to help them make plans and mobilize resources to stay safe and to keep their babies safe. We have the potential to improve the health of a significant number of women who experience intimate partner violence during pregnancy and to help the 3-10 million children who witness this violence each year.”