Creating connection: Harnessing community and student organizations to improve public health nursing education

Background: The Institute of Medicine's report Shorter Lives, Poorer Health is a call to action for health professionals to rethink health systems and their relationships with communities. However, nursing education has long emphasized hospital-based nursing, and consequently faculty skills and courses often reflect this focus. With a shortage of nursing faculty and the current tight budgets that many Colleges of Nursing are facing, public health nursing programs may struggle to provide nursing students with adequate experience and expertise in the public health approaches to healthcare that are increasingly needed to address health disparities--not only among the underserved, but also between the US and the rest of the industrialized world. Description: To address the gap between education and practice, graduate nursing students are organizing social justice groups within the College of Nursing, the School of Public Health, the College of Medicine, and among practicing nurses to discuss their work with community organizations, meet their community counterparts, and to provide mutual support. Cross-collaboration provides an opportunity for knowledge-sharing while increasing the opportunities for students to engage in community-based work, addressing issues such as mass incarceration, immigration, and poverty. Lessons learned: Programs drawing students and the community have been a rich source of information exchange and collaboration, increasing opportunities for students to learn about and assist with the real-life struggles of individuals affected by the programs they will be designing. Recommendations: Universities should support student organizations engaged in community social justice work and better integrate their efforts into public health nursing education.