UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON SCHOOL OF NURSING  

CHN Practice Characteristics

  1. Use sound qualitative and quantitative methods to assess disparities in health among populations and communities by examining indicators that measure determinants of health including:
    1. entrenched poverty and/or lack of adequate economic opportunities;
    2. lack of access to appropriate disease prevention and health promotion services;
    3. lack of appropriate medical treatment;
    4. environmental threats to health;
    5. lack of health-supporting social support at work, home and in the community;
    6. system structures and incentives that discriminate against groups with the greatest disparities in education, race, ethnicity, cultural background and environment.

  2. Assess the contribution of multiple sectors in the community to health of populations and communities, including:
    1. tribal governments;
    2. medical and hospital payors and providers;
    3. medical equipment and pharmaceutical companies;
    4. high-technology and manufacturing companies;
    5. local and regional retail businesses;
    6. labor unions and professional associations;
    7. fraternal organizations;
    8. communities of faith

  3. Support the capacity of community members and health systems to engage in the political processes of developing sound health policies and creating culturally appropriate programs and services. Activities include:
    1. education of community members, health insurers, and health providers about health status disparities and programs of intervention for improved health;
    2. development of leadership capacity in the community through citizen participation, groups process skills, resource development, network skills and identifying community values.

  4. Analyze, formulate and evaluate health policies at multiple levels and in various venues, including formalized health systems. Activities focus on:
    1. evaluation of the relationship between health policy and its consequent health status disparities, programs, services, and structures;
    2. evaluation of the relationship between public and corporate health policy with their consequent structures and services and the alleviation of health disparities.

  5. Facilitate collaborations, coalitions, and alliances that mobilize individuals, groups and communities, and community agencies across sectors to partner with each other, and with medical and public health systems to develop sustainable programs and to reform health systems to alleviate and prevent health disparities

  6. Design, implement and evaluate culturally appropriate intervention programs to protect, promote, and restore health and prevent disease and injury.

  7. Monitor and evaluate the performance of health organizations and systems in the delivery of programs and services by using performance indicators and measures of health of populations and communities.

  8. Use verbal, written, and cyber skills to communicate health status disparities, analysis of policies and systems, proposals for intervention, and evaluation of performance of health systems to improve health.
As community health generalists, CHN graduates are qualified to plan and establish programs of health promotion/disease prevention for specific populations. Some graduates work in public health nursing and are involved in such things as influencing policy, program planning, research, maternal child health, AIDS and alcoholism prevention and TB surveillance. Some CHN gradutes teach in junior colleges. Other graduates will eventually go on and get doctoral degrees in Nursing. Recent graduates from the University of Washington have done such things as:
  • working in an in-service education and staff development office in a hospital providing training for nurses and other hospital personnel,
  • working as a community nurse and health educator on an Indian reservation,
  • working as an assistant professor of community health nursing, and
  • working in the area of state government policy for long term care facilities.