How Public Health Nurses Make the Case
Public health nurses working for a local or county health department often find themselves more involved with program planning than direct patient care. Often, they are asked to help develop a health education program based on what is affecting the community the most, limited by budgetary constraints while still meeting reporting requirements of grant funders.
Let’s say your health department has been given the opportunity to apply for funding from three sponsoring organizations. The choices are to develop public health education programs about alcohol consumption, smoking cessation, and community HIV testing. In an upcoming department meeting you are asked to make a case for and against applying for the funding of each of these programs.
- In preparing for this presentation, what specific types of data would you recommend to the department? (2 points)
- What would be the sources of these data? Are those sources from local, state, or national resources? (2 points)
- How could Health People 2030 help frame this presentation? (3 points)
- Now look at your home town or any other area you would be interested in and give numbers as to why this area needs public health education. Explain not only the statistics but where you got the numbers from. (3 points)