Public Health Webinar: Meridy Black, Caroline Brunt, & Shari Laliberte with guest Deborah Littman

Overcoming Barriers to Full Scope Public Health Practicums through Community-College Partnerships

A key learning objective of nursing education programs is to educate students about the principles of primary health care and population health promotion (PHP) from a social determinants of health perspective. In the current health care context it is challenging to deliver practicums that will allow students to gain the full scope of public health experience. A cross-jurisdictional scan of all Canadian health region websites found that only 25% of interventions addressed equity and 16% were targeting the population as a whole. Most interventions relied on direct interventions at the 1:1 level (e.g., bringing health services to underserved communities). Interventions providing fiscal support for citizens or through formalized policies addressing environmental factors such as regulation were less common (MacNeil, 2012). Thus, it has become increasingly important to be innovative in educating nursing students about multi-level population health promotion practice. In this webinar we will present options for integrating academic content with practicum experiences and to developing multi-level health promotion practicums, beyond the health sector, with diverse inter-sectoral partners. We will also present our strategies for addressing the barriers that our students will face upon their graduation, in applying what they have learned through inter-sectoral partnerships, in participatory research, and advocacy work.