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

Abstract

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.

Fall Prevention Care Management

“…From a nursing education perspective, care management that focuses on fall prevention offers an excellent opportunity for authentic learning, while providing valuable care related to fall prevention. This study adds to publications about nursing students' positive impact on older adults at risk for falling9,15 and students involvement in care coordination in academic-practice partnerships 16–18…”

“…This study adds to publications about nursing students' positive impact on older adults at risk for falling 9,15 and students involvement in care coordination in academic-practice partnerships. [16][17][18]…”

Teaching Strategies for Health Advocacy for Undergraduate Nursing Students: A Scoping Review

“…Theoretical exposition also appears as a learning strategy to approach the theoretical field of health advocacy. Educational presentations on concepts and principles of advocacy (Castro & Levesque, 2018; Samuels-Dennis et al, 2016), legislative processes (McNiel & Elertson, 2018), and the field of health policy making (Perry & Emory, 2017) are represented.…”

“…To measure the effectiveness of the intervention, one study used an unvalidated pre- and post-intervention questionnaire (Perry & Emory, 2017); the other applied the Protective Nursing Advocacy Scale (Gazarian et al, 2016). Among the eight qualitative studies, there was a predominance of descriptive studies with qualitative analysis of focus groups and interviews (McNiel & Elertson, 2018; Moquin et al, 2018; Peddle et al, 2019; Samuels-Dennis et al, 2016). The qualitative studies also used debriefing and written reflection (Adams, 2019; Maley & Gross, 2019), application of a researcher-designed evaluation form (Castro & Levesque, 2018), and reflective/experiential diaries (Link et al, 2019; McNiel & Elertson, 2018).…”

“…In the qualitative studies, advocacy evaluation methods were predominantly by content analysis (Adams, 2019; Maley & Gross, 2019; Samuels-Dennis et al, 2016), followed by thematic analysis (Moquin et al, 2018) and framework analysis (Peddle et al, 2019). The only mixed study used a Likert questionnaire and discourse evaluation, without presenting the method of analysis (Crowe, 2014).…”