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Advanced Practice Environmental Health Nurse Specialist Graduate Certificate
The GCPAPN pathway in Environmental Health Nursing is open to graduate students or post-Masters professionals who wish to develop advanced skills and expertise in environmental health nursing. This new graduate certificate program is just becoming open to applicants this Fall Quarter, 2007.
About the Certificate Program
More than one quarter of the global disease burden is attributable to environmental exposures, with children bearing a disproportionate amount of the risk. Nurses are well placed to address these exposures with individuals, families, communities, and populations, particularly if provided with the tools and encouragement to act on underlying causes of disease and disability. To prepare nurses for leadership in making a lasting impact on health through improving our responses to environmental conditions, the University of Washington School of Nursing is launching a new certificate in Advanced Practice Environmental Health Nursing. This 15 credit program, along with a capstone experience, integrates coursework with relevant content from the Disaster Preparedness and Response Certificate for nurses, as well as drawing upon courses from the UW’s School of Nursing and School of Public Health and Community Medicine. Participating students will consider a variety of dimensions of environmental health, ranging from health disparities and the social determinants of health) to technical classes addressing specific agents (e.g., water quality) or methods (e.g., quantitative risk assessment).
With the turn of the last century public health nurses specifically, as well as the broader general nursing community, have assumed an increasingly active role addressing local environmental issues. National efforts by the Institute of Medicine, the National Institutes of Health, and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) have been successful in emphasizing environmental health as an important and substantive area of nursing practice by providing additional support and legitimacy to environmental health as a critical area of nursing practice. Partly in response to the public’s efforts, and partly in response to national initiatives, nurses have begun to reclaim their historic role addressing household and neighborhood environmental issues concerns.
The UW School of Nursing’s certificate in Advanced Practice Environmental Health Nursing provides a mechanism to advance the individual nurse, and the nursing profession as a whole, to this next step of leadership and expertise in environmental health. The UW is becoming established as a regional hub of excellence in environmental health, with a newly funded federal grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration helping to create a critical mass of well-educated and well-supported nurses in Washington State.
Available Courses
While a limited number of existing and relevant classes will be made accessible via distance learning technologies, certificate courses for participating students will be selected from the following School of Nursing and School of Public Health courses.
REQUIRED courses (and number of credits) from the School of Nursing and from the School of Public Health and Community Medicine
EPI 511 Introduction to Epidemiology (4) Epidemiologic methods for non-epidemiology majors. Focuses on research designs and methods to describe disease occurrence and risk factor associations; uses quantitative and biomedical information to infer whether causal relationships exist between potential causes and disease in populations. (School of Public Health and Community Medicine)
NCLIN 554 Occupational and Environmental Health Nursing: Practice Issues (3) In-depth overview of occupational health and safety. Includes discussion of American workforce, work environments, regulations, and political issues; identifies trends which affect practice; introduces prevalent health disorders which result from occupational exposure; examines and applies nursing theory to the prevention and control of occupational injuries and illnesses. (School of Nursing)
NCLIN 558 (or ENV H 511) Occupational and Environmental Health Nursing: Program Development (3)
In-depth examination of occupational health and safety programs including organizational analyses, budgeting, marketing, case management, and workers' compensation; also political, economic, legal, and ethical issues. Focuses on development, implementation, and evaluation of programs including health promotion, EAP, and health surveillance. Applies public health and nursing sciences to selected work-related problems. (School of Nursing)
ELECTIVE courses (and number of credits) from the School of Nursing
NURS 557 Health, Culture, and Community (3) A theory and skills class concerning development of personal and organizational cultural competence in community-based participatory research. Core concepts of cultural competence are considered as they are practiced in community settings. Graded.
NURS 560 Dynamics of Community Health Practice (3/5) Examination of and experience with principles of clinical practice in community settings. Included are family as community constituent, populations at risk, community assessment, and community development. Graded.
NURS 563 Advanced Community Health Nursing (3) Systematic inquiry into the nature and foundations of community health nursing. Analytic and theoretical perspectives on health risk assessment and nursing interventions in the community. Implications for community health nursing services. Graded.
NURS 568 Health Politics and Policy (3) Analyzes the formal and informal political context of health care delivery, professionals, and institutions in the United States. Addresses medical coverage and public persuasion, as well as policy analysis. Special attention is paid to women's political resources and participation. CR/NC.
NURS 576 Assessment and Collaboration with Communities and Systems (3) Examine, critique and apply theory and practice in assessing and collaborating with communities, populations and systems cross-culturally. Develop techniques for working with communities and systems, including using multiple data sources, performance indicators, community mobilization, capacity building, and coalition development. Graduate level. BSN senior with permission. Graded.
NURS 580 Current Issues in Occupational and Environmental Medicine (2, max. 12) Interdisciplinary seminar on current and emerging topics in the practice of environmental and occupational health. Faculty- and student-led presentations with an interdisciplinary focus, including occupational hygiene, nursing, and medical issues. Prerequisite: environmental health graduate student, occupational health nursing student, or permission of instructor. Offered: jointly with ENV H 596; AWSp. Graded.
NURS 584 Critical and Interdisciplinary Approach to Health Policy (3) Advanced seminar to critically analyze various public health policies from a social justice framework. Graded.
NURS 590 Ecology of Human Health (5) Focus on the pluralistic constructions of health as related to different environments. Personal and biological characteristics vary, interact with, and transform the person and the environment. Emphasis on nursing as a social construction which is interactive with the human's experience of health and healing. Graded.
NURS 593 Preventive Therapeutics (3) Examines literature in the field of health promotion and illness prevention with the purpose of students developing their individual model of health promotion and illness prevention in their own foci of interest considering the social and political forces prevailing. CR/NC.
NCLIN 503 Advanced Fieldwork Community Health Nursing (2-6, max. 12) Guided experience in delineating nursing roles in community settings. Development of a philosophy of community health nursing. Application of core concepts pertaining to health, ethics, care, and community. A minimum of four hours of guided experience weekly. Prerequisite: graduate standing and permission of instructor. Graded.
ELECTIVE courses from the School of Public Health and Community Medicine
ENV H 545 Water, Wastewater and Health (4) Review of water supply water quality, and water/wastewater treatment as they related to human health. Includes water law and regulations, source water protection, basic treatment technologies for water and waste, chemical and microbial contaminants, and recreational water. Graded.
ENV H 511 Environmental and Occupational Health (1-3, max. 3) Effects of exposure to chemical, physical, and biological agents, embracing the community and workplace environments. Current issues, using specific cases from recent literature as basis for classroom discussion and written assignments. Graded.
ENV H 512 Waste Management, Recycling, and Pollution Control (3) Survey of selected technological components of environmental health infrastructure via lecture and weekly field trips to full facilities. Sites visited vary year to year, but may include paper and steel plants using reclaimed feedstock, cement kiln using waste as supplemental fuel, municipal wastewater treatment facility, and steam generation plant. Either graded or C/NC
ENV H 514 Environmental and Occupational Toxicology I (3) Major topical areas in human and environmental toxicology, including the biochemical, cellular, and physiological mechanisms by which chemicals produce toxic responses; the toxicology of the major classes of chemicals; principles of toxicity testing; interpretation of toxicological data. Graded.
ENV H 515 Environmental and Occupational Toxicology II (3) Major topical areas in human and environmental toxicology, including the biochemical, cellular, and physiological mechanisms by which chemicals produce toxic responses; the toxicology of the major classes of chemicals; principles of toxicity testing; interpretation of toxicological data. Graded.
ENV H 516 Environmental and Occupational Toxicology III (3) Major topical areas in human and environmental toxicology, including the biochemical, cellular, and physiological mechanisms by which chemicals produce toxic responses; the toxicology of the major classes of chemicals; principles of toxicity testing; interpretation of toxicological data. Graded.
ENV H 517 Children's Environmental Health (3) Discussion of environmental health issues as they pertain to children's health. Includes historical perspective of public health research and policies directed at protecting children's health and emerging scientific and public health issues such as childhood exposure to mercury and pesticides, childhood asthma, cancer, and environmental justice. Graded.
ENV H 541 Ecology of Environmentally Transmitted Microbial Hazards (3) Focuses on the transmission of infectious microorganisms by air, food, water, and other environmental media. Provides an introduction to environmentally transmitted pathogens, and discusses factors affecting their environmental fate, transport, and persistence. Graded.
ENV H 546 Pesticides and Public Health (3) Examines health risks and benefits associated with pesticide use in the United States and internationally; reviews exposure, toxicity, epidemiology, and regulation of pesticides, focusing on populations such as workers and children; discusses benefits derived from vector control, food production, and food preservation. Graded.
ENV H 564 Recognition of Health and Safety Problems in Industry (4) Develops skills in occupational health and safety hazard recognition in a variety of important northwest industries. Focuses on process understanding and hazard recognition skills during walk-through inspections of several local facilities, stressing a multidisciplinary approach. Graded.
ENV H 565/NURS 565 (Cross listed) Occupational Stress and Stress Management (3) Relationships between occupational stressors and worker's health, well-being, productivity. Analyzes models of occupational stress. Investigates similarities, differences between job-related stressors and stress responses in various occupations. Explores elements of worksite stress management programs. Prerequisite: graduate standing in nursing or allied health discipline. Either graded or C/NC.
ENV H 570 Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology (3) Research in occupational and environmental determinants of disease. Defining exposed populations, characterizing exposure levels, estimating disease risks relative to exposure. Cohort, case-control, cross-sectional designs for various health outcomes. Applications to exposure standard setting and risk assessment. Graded.
ENV H 577 Risk Assessment for Environmental Health Hazards (3/4) Examines context, methodologies, data, uncertainties, and institutional arrangements for risk assessment. Qualitative and quantitative approaches to identification, characterization, and control of environmental hazards to health emphasized through didactic and case studies. Graded.
ENV H 584 Occupational Health and Safety: Policy and Politics (3) Designed to provide a better understanding of the historical, political, and policy issues in occupational health and safety through selected readings and discussion with experts in the field. Particular emphasis on the Occupational Safety and Health Act. Students present testimony in a mock congressional hearing on a health and safety issue. Graded.
The Capstone Experience
In addition to selected coursework students will complete a capstone experience of 3 or more credits, involving a mentored research or clinical experience that is negotiated between the student and his or her certificate faculty advisor. Examples of potential capstone experiences include: 1) tracking a bill introduced into the Washington State Legislature to reduce children’s exposure to brominated flame retardants in clothing and furniture, 2) conducting 4 focus groups and summarizing findings from interviews with residents living in Seattle’s public housing projects, 3) conducting well inspections with an environmental health sanitarian from rural Washington for the purpose of understanding the health risks from agricultural run-off, or 4) conducting an assessment of the environmental health content needs of nurses employed on tribal nation reservations.
How to Apply
You can apply to this program at any time throughout the year provided you hold an existing masters degree or are currently in a masters degree program. In addition to meeting required minimum GCPAPN admission criteria, your application must be accompanied by a corresponding application to the UW Graduate School or previous UW Graduate School acceptance.
Contact Betty Bekemeier, the faculty advisor to the Advanced Practice Environmental Health Nurse Specialist certificate program, with any questions:
Betty Bekemeier, PhD, MPH, RN
Psychosocial & Community Health
School of Nursing
Box 357263
University of Washington, Seattle 98195-7263
bettybek@u.washington.edu
phone: (206)616-8411
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