Dean's Message - April 2012

About

The Dean’s Message is also published in spring 2012 issue of Innovations in Nursing & Health magazine, which will be available the week of April 30th.

I am proud of researchers’ accomplishments in our Center for Improving Health Outcomes for Children, Teens & Families. Under the leadership of Director Bonnie Gance-Cleveland, PhD, RNC, PNP, FAAN, researchers are working on solutions to many health challenges, including:

addressing childhood obesity from birth to adolescence;
promoting breastfeeding to reduce the risks of obesity;
influencing workforce issues, including patient safety, and
collaborating with communities to decrease health disparities and establish sustainable, culturally appropriate interventions through community-based research.

Examples of research initiatives below provide a report on current activity. You may visit nursingandhealth.asu.edu/child-teen for more details or request the new Center brochure by sending an e-mail to cctf@asu.edu for more information.

GirlSmart Project

With NIH/NIDA funding, the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies at the University of California, San Francisco awarded Angela Chia-Chen Chen, PhD, RN, PMHNP-BC, a grant to conduct a bilingual (Spanish/English), web-based intervention, “GirlSmart,” to promote safe-sex practices among at-risk young Latinas, the second largest ethnic group affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. HIV/STI prevention interventions can be highly cost effective and interventions tailored to Latina adolescents’ special cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic needs could potentially reduce health disparities in this population. Information technology may provide new avenues to increase opportunities to deliver sensitive topics on prevention in a more confidential, sensitive, accessible, and engaging manner for youth.

The research team welcomes community agencies as partners to promote safe-sex practices and to reduce HIV/STI risk among at-risk young Latinas.

The COPE/Healthy Lifestyles for Teens

The COPE/Healthy Lifestyles for Teens a NINR RO1 grant awarded to the College, is now in its third year of data collection. Former Dean Bernadette Melnyk, PhD, RN, CPNP/PMHNP, FNAP, FAAN, is principal investigator (PI) and Center Assistant Professor Diana Jacobson PhD, RN, PNP-BC, is the site PI.

The randomized controlled trial’s goal is to test the efficacy of an educational and cognitive behavior skills building intervention on healthy lifestyle beliefs, nutritional and physical activity lifestyle behaviors, self concept, anxiety and depressive symptoms, and academic outcomes of 14 to 16 year old adolescents. Cohorts of adolescents and their parents were recruited from Phoenix and Tempe high school districts respectively. The research team is preparing to collect the 6 month post intervention data in May with the final 12 month data collection scheduled for November for a third cohort.

The COPE research team has been welcomed into 11 high schools and serves as an excellent example of the value of community-based research.

Eating Healthy from Birth

The U.S. Surgeon General issued a report last year supporting breastfeeding that emphasizes changes needed in health care infrastructure, workplaces, and society to enable mothers to follow American Academy of Pediatrics and WHO guidelines for the first six months of infant life and with the addition of complementary foods for the first two years or more. Mothers receive lactation information and support while in the hospital but most often don’t have support after discharge. Early and rapid infant growth is strongly associated with early development and persistence of child obesity and linked to serious health problems later in life. These findings have led Elizabeth Reifsnider, PhD, RN, WHNP, PHCNS-BC, FAAN, to study child obesity through public health interventions. Parenting education on early childhood has been the focus of Reifsnider’s research, which is profiled on page 11 of the spring issue of Innovations in Nursing & Health magazine.

Horizontal Hostility and Patient Safety

The Joint Commission implemented a standard in 2009 that requires hospitals to define all forms of disruptive behavior and have a process in place for dealing with it. The concept of horizontal hostility (HH) in nursing is apparent when the workplace culture or norm enables dominant individuals to pressure those who are more vulnerable. Behaviors consistent with HH vary and range from overt behavioral manifestations such as rude or belittling comments to more covert actions like withholding pertinent information. It is imperative to understand the consequences of HH and whether it influences patient safety.

Working with a local Phoenix community hospital, Barbara L. Wilson, PhD, RNC-OB, sought to determine the perceived level of HH and examine potentially adverse or unsafe behaviors that the nurses exhibited as a result of the threat of it. Using a 28-item survey tool modeled after the AACN work in peer incivility (2005), all RNs were surveyed over two months.

Results from this study in a single community hospital suggest that the influence of HH in the acute care environment can have a significant impact on nurses’ behaviors with potentially tragic outcomes for their patients.

End Note

I encourage others in the community to become involved in the outstanding research activities of the Center for Improving Health Outcomes for Children, Teens & Families. With your help, we will find solutions to a healthier future for children.

Fond Regards,

Teri Britt Pipe