timing is everything and now is the time

GUEST EDITORIAL

Timing is Everything andNow is the Time

Public health nursing has a long history of provid-ing care and access to care to the most vulnerableand marginalized in society. Notwithstanding thisvenerable history, the status of public healthnurses has declined in proportion to the increasein the status and number of advance practicenurses providing primary care. To some extent thisis understandable as a natural consequence ofsocial forces, economic considerations, and influ-ences on professional self-esteem. I take a moreradical interpretation that accepts some responsi-bility for having created the situation and thus tochanging it.

As a faculty member who is located in a schoolof public health, rather than a college of nursing,and being the only RN in that school, I have experi-enced the glaring absence of public health nursesfrom virtually all public heath dialogues. Publichealth nurses tend to talk to themselves almost tothe exclusion of talking with colleagues in publichealth. This has been a mistake on our part. Thevery good news is that this is a relatively easy mis-take to correct.

For my part, I made a renewed commitment topublic health nursing, and to do that within thecontext of public health more so than nursing. Iwrote a grant to the Agency for HealthcareResearch and Quality (AHRQ) under their smallconference grant portfolio. I had the good fortuneto have a program officer who was a nurse andwho championed the focus on public health nurs-ing. Before she retired, I received the grant. Thegrant purpose was to hold a small conference, withinvited participants from various public health-related backgrounds, who would collaborativelydevelop a research agenda for public health nursingthat addresses quality and outcomes. Three papersin this issue of Public Health Nursing stem directlyfrom that conference (Bigbee & Issel, 2012; Issel,Bekemeier & Kneipp, 2012; Monsen et al., 2012).The intention behind each of these papers is to

stimulate public health nursing science to “up thegame,” as the expression goes. As a nursing spe-cialty, now is the time to must push the envelopesof scholarship, practice, and collaboration.

Almost concurrently, many public health nurseleaders have been engaged in another set of activitiesthat contribute to correcting the mistake. Some haveused the invite-yourself approach and others usedthe let-me-help approach to become included in sev-eral practice-based research networks (PBRNs)(http://www.publichealthsystems.org/pbrn) whichare funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation(RWJF) under their Public Health Systems and Ser-vices Research (PHSSR) portfolio. Through involve-ment of public health nurses in the PBRNs, publichealth nursing has gained visibility, a sense of inter-disciplinary value, and a re-energized purpose.

Lastly, the RWJF has initiated a focus on pub-lic health nursing. In February 2012, the Founda-tion held a 1-day forum with participants invitedfrom a wide variety of nursing and public healthagencies. The forum provided RWJF an opportu-nity to explore the issues facing our specialty. Infall 2012, a survey will be launched to enumerate,for the first time, the public health nursing work-force. I choose to interpret this effort as further evi-dence that the time is now for public health nursesto move forward with pride, proclaim the value-added provided by public health nursing practice,and to be a stronger, more visible bridge betweenpublic health and nursing.

L. Michele Issel PhD, RN, Clinical ProfessorUIC School of Public Health, Chicago, IL

Correspondence to:L. Michele Issel, UIC, School of Public Health,

1603 W. Taylor St. (MC 923)Chicago, IL 60612

E-mail: issel@uic.edu

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Public Health Nursing Vol. 29 No. 4, pp. 287–288

0737-1209/© 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.doi: 10.1111/j.1525-1446.2012.01036.x

References

Bigbee, J. L., & Issel, L. M. (2012). Conceptualmodels for population-focused public healthnursing interventions and outcomes: Thestate of the art. Public Health Nursing. 29(4), 370–379. doi:10.1111/j.1525-1446.2011.01006.x.

Issel, L. M., Bekemeier, B., & Kneipp, S. (2012). Apublic health nursing research agenda. PublicHealth Nursing 29(4), 330–342. doi:10.1111/j.1525-1446.2011.00989.x.

Monsen, K. A., et al. (2012). Development of a Pub-lic Health Nursing Data Infrastructure. PublicHealth Nursing 29(4), 343–351.

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