title: A public health nursing research agenda.
abstract: Public health nurses (PHNs) use many interventions to prevent illness and promote the health of populations. Unfortunately, generating evidence regarding PHN practice is not explicitly identified as a research priority area of the major national funding agencies. Nor has PHN, as a profession, had a strong enough research agenda to drive practice improvement on a population-level and to drive funding to support such areas of research. To further advance the science needed to guide PHN practice, a national conference to set the research agenda was held in October 2010 with grant support from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The conference was part of a multimethod, participatory, multistage approach taken to generate the final research priority themes and corresponding priority research questions. The process yielded four high priority PHN research themes: PHN intervention models, Quality of population-focused PHN practice, Metrics of/for PHN, and comparative effectiveness and PHN outcomes. As the agenda is adopted by funding agencies, researchers, and practice-based partners, a more focused program of research will produce evidence that can guide population-focused PHN practice.
authors: University of Illinois at Chicago, School of Public Health, Chicago, Illinois 60612, USA. issel@uic.edu
authors: L Michele
authors: LM
authors: Issel
authors: Betty
authors: B
authors: Bekemeier
authors: Shawn
authors: S
authors: Kneipp
mesh_terms: D057186:Comparative Effectiveness Research; D003226:Congresses as Topic; D055318:Evidence-Based Nursing; D006040:Goals; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care; D011637:Public Health Nursing / Q000639:trends*