Online Program

Oral

Health disparities that reflect inequity in health remain a persistent and troubling challenge for public health nursing. Despite innovations in public health practice, research, and education; disparities in the burden of chronic disease among children, in particular, have either remained stable or increased. Policy solutions to this problem remain contradictory. A key example of such a contradiction is in the policies governing the public health and primary care sectors, the integration of which is an imperative in restructuring in the US healthcare system. Such integration may provide the structural changes needed to improve health equity through a shared focus on primary prevention and on addressing the unequal distribution of social determinants of health. The 2012 Institute of Medicine (IOM) report, Primary Care and Public Health: Promoting Integration to Improve Public Health outlined five principles of successful integration: improving population health; community engagement; aligned leadership; infrastructural sustainability; and sharing of data. The purpose of this session is to use these principles as a lens for public health nurses to examine the equity-enhancing policy opportunities that might naturally link structural differences in primary care and public health via three pediatric health-disparity exemplars: 1) An examination of participant engagement in a WIC-community organization action project to address issues of food security and diet related chronic disease, 2) examining opportunities in school health policies to address influences on activity behaviors and weight outcomes in obesogenic school environments, and 3) a critical discourse analysis of national strategies for the elimination of asthma disparities.

Session Objectives: Identify issues of food security and diet related chronic disease. Explain how school health policies address can influences activity behaviors and weight outcomes in obesogenic school environments.

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