Leadership Advocacy: Bringing Nursing to the Homeless and Underserved

Addressing health disparities of individuals experiencing homelessness in the U.S. with community institutional partnerships: An integrative review

AIMS

To examine existing community-institutional partnerships providing health care services to people experiencing homelessness by addressing social determinants of health (SDOH) at multiple socioecological levels.

DESIGN

Integrative review.

DATA SOURCES

PubMed (Public/Publisher MEDLINE), CINAHL (The Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature database), and EMBASE (Excerpta Medica database) were searched to identify articles on health care services, partnerships, and transitional housing.

REVIEW METHODS

Database search used the following keywords: Public-private sector partnerships, community-institutional relation, community-academic, academic community, community university, university community, housing, emergency shelter, homeless persons, shelter, and transitional housing. Articles published until November 2021 were eligible for inclusion. The Johns Hopkins Nursing Evidence-Based Practice Quality Guide was used to appraise the quality of articles included in the review by two researchers.

RESULTS

Seventeen total articles were included in the review. The types of partnerships discussed in the articles included academic-community partnerships (n = 12) and hospital-community partnerships (n = 5). Health services were also provided by different kinds of health care providers, including nursing and medical students, nurses, physicians, social workers, psychiatrists, nutritionists, and pharmacists. Health care services spanning from preventative care services to acute and specialized care services and health education were also made possible through community-institutional partnerships.

CONCLUSION

There is a need for more studies on partnerships that aim to improve the health of homeless populations by addressing social determinants of health at multiple socioecological levels of individuals who experience homelessness. Existing studies do not utilize elaborate evaluation methods to determine partnership efficacy.

IMPACT

Findings from this review highlight gaps in the current understanding of partnerships that seek to increase access to care services for people who experience homelessness.

NO PATIENT OR PUBLIC CONTRIBUTION

The results of the systematic review were solely from the articles reviewed and do not include information from patients, service users, caregivers, or members of the public.

A call to act: RN volunteers needed in their communities

OBJECTIVE

Recognizing registered nurses (RNs) as valued, trusted professionals to lead and advocate for healthier communities (Pittman, 2019), the New Jersey Action Coalition (NJAC) developed a model designed to match RN volunteers to community projects.

DESIGN

Using a descriptive study design, researchers examined the numbers of RN volunteers and projects across 21 counties in NJ from 2016 to 2018.

SAMPLE

The sample consisted of the numbers of volunteers and projects from every county retrieved from the NJAC's website.

MEASUREMENTS

In addition to the NJAC data, researchers examined the percentage of RNs living in each county as well as data from County Health Rankings & Roadmaps© (University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, 2019). The counties were divided into three groups: high, moderate, and low overall health counties.

RESULTS

After 2 years of implementing the NJAC model, the data revealed that, at minimum, there was one RN coach per county in the high overall health counties group. In the lower overall health counties group, there were fewer community projects, less RN coaches, and volunteers.

CONCLUSION

Engaging RN volunteers requires raising awareness of the needs of the community and the ways in which a RN can take action to promote public health and health equity.