Health Advocacy Project: Evaluating the Benefits of Service Learning to Nursing Students and Low Income Individuals Involved in a Community-Based Mental Health Promotion Project.

Poverty, along with other factors such as unemployment, work and life stressors, interpersonal violence, and lack of access to high quality health and/or social services all play a role in determining who develops a mental illness and for whom those symptoms persist or worsen. Senior nursing student preparing to enter the field and working in a service learning capacity may be able to influence early recovery and symptom abatement among those most vulnerable to mental illness. A consortium of community stakeholders and researchers collaboratively designed a 10-week mental health promotion project called the Health Advocacy Project (HAP). The project combines case management and system navigation support delivered by trained and highly supervised nursing students to individuals experiencing major depressive disorder (MDD) and/or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In this article, we present the findings of a qualitative fidelity evaluation that examines the effectiveness of nursing students in delivering the health advocacy intervention at the level and with the intensity originally intended. The findings demonstrate how the services of senior nursing students may be optimized to benefit our healthcare system and populations most at risk for developing MDD and PTSD.

Prenatal Education: Program Content and Preferred Delivery Method From the Perspective of the Expectant Parents.

The purpose of this research is to better understand expectant parents' perception of importance regarding a wide range of prenatal education topics and their information delivery method preferences. One hundred and eighty-one expectant parents completed the investigator-developed survey tools. Most of the participants rated each item on the Perceived Importance of Topics survey as "important" or "very important." Overall, the topics of Newborn Safety, Birth, and Breastfeeding had the highest percentage of participants who indicated the topic was "very important." Most of the respondents (47.5%, n = 86) indicated that their preference was to attend face-to-face-prenatal education sessions. Additional delivery method preferences are discussed. Findings from this study provide valuable information to inform future prenatal education program content and delivery.