The growing number of NPs providing care to patients can significantly impact public health through consistent health promotion in clinical practice.

This document explores the opportunity for scholarship to enhance the evidence base for academic public health practice and practice-based research. Demonstrating Excellence in Practice-Based Research for Public Health defines practice-based research; describes its various approaches, models, and methods; explores ways to overcome its challenges; and recommends actions for its stakeholders in both academic and practice communities. It is hoped that this document will lead to new partnership opportunities between public health researchers and public health practitioners to strengthen the infrastructure of public health and add new dimensions to the science of public health practice. Demonstrating Excellence in Practice-Based Research for Public Health is intended for those who produce, participate in, and use practice-based research. This includes academic researchers and educators, public health administrators and field staff, clinical health professionals, community-based organizations and professionals, and interested members of the public.

Demonstrating Excellence in Practice-based Teaching for Public Health is a report intended to provide a resource for practice-based teaching of public health and includes a brief explanation of terms and practices, as well as suggestions on methodologies for implementation. No comparable resource currently exists that assists faculty and practice partners to recognize, implement, and promote practice-based teaching. This article summarizes findings from the report, including an explanation of practice-based teaching, its guiding principles, practical approaches, and recommendations on sustaining and advancing partnerships for professional public health education and training.

Migrant farmworkers should be considered a vulnerable population because they work in a hazardous industry, are often members of an ethnic minority, have known difficulty in accessing health care, and are often of lower socioeconomic status. For these reasons, too, it is extremely important to conduct health-related research with this often-underserved group. However, because migrant farmworkers are vulnerable, investigators must be especially vigilant in protecting them from the potential harms of research and in ensuring that the special ethical issues that arise in research with this population are identified and addressed for every project. In response to the National Cancer Institute's concerns about the feasibility of conducting epidemiologic studies among migrant farmworkers, researchers undertook four feasibility studies near the Texas-Mexico border. Each study raised different, complex ethical questions that challenged the investigators, but whose resolution turned out to be crucial to the success of the studies.

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SYNOPSISAs the public's health-care needs increase in complexity, renewed attention is being given to the ethical dimensions of public health decision-making and the development of public health ethics as a bounded area of teaching and research. This article provides an overview of approaches to public health ethics and decision-making, and suggests ways to incorporate the professionalism competencies into the teaching of public health practice. The teaching of ethics language, concepts, and tools for decision analysis helps to prepare students for the inevitable ethical choices they will have to make in their professional practice. The teaching of ethics and professionalism and the experiences of professionals enrich each other and foster the critical link between education and practice.

The study identified groups of cancer patients at risk of hospital death. These results should account when planning the allocation of hospital palliative care services as well as when informing policy decisions about health care financing and delivery of these services.

Demands for a high level of professionalism in public health practice, and concomitant strengthening of public health education to match 21st-century community challenges provide an opportunity to reconsider the current paradigm for professional degrees in public health. In this article, we consider whether the currently typical public health education meets the requirements of a professional education, examine the current state of public health education, and provide a rationale for renewed emphasis on the doctor of public health (DrPH) degree. We also present one potential three-year DrPH curriculum to stimulate further discussion, while acknowledging the multiple challenges that face any school of public health moving to implement such an education.