Public health

Radon as a human carcinogen has been clearly documented and children are an especially vulnerable population due to biophysical characteristics and duration of exposure. An investigation was necessary to determine if health policies exist to protect school children from radon exposure. This study inventoried the states with regulations regarding school radon testing. Nine states, eight with high geographic risk, have school testing policies. The implication of the policy inventory is that 28 high-radon states do not have policies in place to protect school children from radon.

OBJECTIVES: To describe the environmental health (EH) demands placed on public health nurses (PHNs) as well as the barriers and facilitators to incorporating EH into PHN practice.
DESIGN AND SAMPLE: A cross-sectional multimode (Web and pencil/paper) survey was used to collect data from PHNs in 1 rural western state. Research participants included 141 PHNs from a total of 228 survey invitations (61% response).

 Over one-third of long-term care (LTC) residents exhibit moderate-to-severe cognitive impairment. These residents are more likely to be inactive, require assistance with activities of daily living, have medical comorbidities, and be exposed to fewer opportunities to engage in functional and physical activities than peers who are cognitively intact or have only mild cognitive deficits.

 Reforming the public health infrastructure requires substantial system changes at the state level, including the reorganization of state agencies' plans, roles, and relationships with other sectors and communities. Beyond the limited time period of pilot programs and grants, how are these public health system changes to be sustained? Turning Point is an initiative of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to transform and strengthen the public health system.

 OBJECTIVES: To examine the level of awareness of radon issues, correlates of elective testing behaviors, and the accuracy of risk perception for radon exposures among rural residents receiving public health services.
DESIGN: A cross-sectional design was used in which questionnaire data and household analytic data for radon levels were collected from a nonprobabilistic sample of rural households.

 This secondary analysis examined relationships between the environment and adherence to a walking intervention among 252 urban and suburban, midlife African American women. Participants received an enhanced or minimal behavioral intervention. Walking adherence was measured as the percentage of prescribed walks completed.

The United States is facing a severe shortage of well-trained public health workers, and public health nursing is the discipline with the greatest shortage. A local public health agency's (LPHA's) staffing and leadership characteristics are critical in determining its programs, performance, and capacity. A better understanding of the relationship between specific staffing and leadership characteristics and public health programs is needed to address this capacity challenge.

OBJECTIVE: This study examined the extent to which public health nurses (PHNs) see value in credentialing and perceive specific barriers related to a community/public health nursing (C/PHN) credential.
DESIGN: A cross-sectional exploratory survey was used to examine the perceived value of credentialing for PHNs and the perceived barriers to obtaining or maintaining the C/PHN credential as the primary variables of interest.
SAMPLE: Data were collected from 655 PHN members of national public health nursing organizations who participated in an online survey.

Leveraging funds to sustain the efforts of a grant-funded initiative is often an explicit, or implicit, expectation in philanthropy. However, the magnitude of funds leveraged and the factors that facilitate success in leveraging are rarely researched. An example of one of these grant-funded initiatives is the National Turning Point Initiative.