Awarded 1st place in the 2018 AJN Book of the Year Awards in the Advanced Practice Nursing category.
- Presents key concepts in population health with a focus on advanced practice
- Comprehensive chapters dedicated to essential topics such as obesity and substance use disorders
- Provides theoretical foundation for transitioning from episodic health to population health principles
- Includes contributions from topic experts in a variety of settings
- Theory and concepts support the patient and client as well as the learner
- Real-world case studies provide class discussion points and support learner-centered activities such as the flipped classroom.
- Dedicated section provides techniques to address compassion fatigue, coaching, and social marketing
- Toolkit and Resources provided in each chapter including websites, assignments, and discussion questions
- Includes chapter dedicated to the role of the executive nurse in population health
This textbook provides essential population concepts in a comprehensive way to advanced practice students in population and public health. Focus is placed on the supports and practices used in the advanced practice role with chapters contributed by nationally known experts on their respective topics.
This text provides the reader with a strong foundation in current population health theory while also providing practical tools to implement the principles into practice.
The text is divided into three parts. The first part provides a global review of population health, and includes coverage of access to data, data analysis, and explores the various APN roles in population health; practitioner, nurse educator, nurse executive, and policy advocate. The second part addresses key issues and populations including the elderly, the military, the chronically ill, and the family roles and health impact of substance abusers. The third section addresses care providers and techniques that foster better care delivery, such as social marketing, coaching, and compassion fatigue. This textbook provides key population concepts in a comprehensive way to advanced practice students in population and public health.
From the Preface
…As we are all aware, healthcare is not cut and dried. We nurses cannot claim a given group has issues because of X, and if Y is done, all will be well. Rather, as advanced practitioners and potential policy influencers, we must grasp the complexities of every case we encounter and address such in hypothetical and actual interventions.
For students, applying the information in this volume to real-life situations will support and reinforce their learning and career development. For those already in practice, this text is designed to increase understanding of the highly specific, often economic and cultural, influences on patients and clients in diverse communities. Being able to recognize the social dynamics allows for better comprehension, more effective intervention, and superior outcomes.
Audrey Weymiller, PhD, APRN – :
1st Place Winner, American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Award in the category of Advanced Practice Nursing
Though I reviewed many worthy submissions, when selecting a first-place winner I looked for a book that was new, fresh, and promoted nursing being at the forefront of comprehensive, quality care in our dynamic health care system.
This text hit the mark—it is the “how-to” book for population health. We are all conceptually aware of the importance of population health, social determinants of health, and big data; this book provides the tools we need to help us integrate these concepts into daily practice.
• Offers case studies and toolkit resources that effectively
• demonstrate integration of population health concepts into
• advanced practice nursing.
• Is grounded in advanced practice nursing expertise. The
• editors bring more than 70 years of combined experience
• to this very useful resource.
• Uses recent references.
Audrey Weymiller, PhD, APRN, Inpatient Palliative Care Consultation
Service, Washington Regional Medical Center, Fayetteville, AR.
AJN Online, January 2019, Volume 119, No. 1
Marilyn W. Edmunds, ANP/GNP – :
Population Health and Its Integration Into Advanced Nursing Practice by editors Mary A.Bemker and Christine Ralyea, is long overdue. As the editor of a major nurse practitioner clinical journal I began noticing references to global health several years ago. We have many NP faculty who publish in our journal in a special section we reserve for faculty articles but had not received any submissions dealing with global health. Curious, I began asking faculty reviewers and authors about whether global health was a topic that was now being covered in their NP curricula. While I only queried about 25 people, I was surprised to find that only 4 of the faculty told me it was not being taught in their programs. Thus, I was very pleased to see this text book published.
The focus on population health is rather complex and sometimes ideas are diffuse, focusing on the different components of the population under study. In the past, a focus on communities or global health was relegated to a few paragraphs or a chapter. For this text, population health focuses on the health outcomes of groups as well as the range and distribution of different health outcomes within the group. The many published definitions of global health commonly indicate that a group is usually tied to a specific geographical area, or have health outcomes which develop by specific or different environmental or individual factors. (For example, think lead in the water in Flint, MI). While the idea of “global health” may seem new, there has been a recognition for many years among health care providers that there are many poor health outcomes in some neighborhoods or among some immigrant populations, and that some other neighborhoods do not share these outcomes. Thus, this book helps the graduate level nursing health care provider in looking at health variances at both the individual and the collective levels.
I review many books that come into the market aimed at nurse practitioners and other advanced nurse practitioners. This book immediately stands out from the rest because of the careful attention to organization, standardization of content presentations, and use of toolboxes. It is rare to see a 528 page book that has a 10 page chapter outline with such detail that you can immediately know where to go in the text for specific information. Each chapter has subheadings for every few paragraphs so that it is clear that each of the faculty writing the specific content follows a standardized format, yet are able to include the content unique to their topic.
The text is divided into three major sections: Section 1: Population Health Overview and Engagement Opportunities for Population Health (which covers integration of population health content into advanced nursing care, data analysis, policy, executive roles, and nursing education. ) Section II: Populations/Considerations/Specific Ares (which deals with pediatric gerontologic, military, chronic disease, obesity, trauma-mental health, substance use, and infectious diseases. And Section III: Tools for managing population health issues (health coaching, compassion fatigue and burnout, and social marketing in population health nursing.) Each chapter has an extensive list of references.
I particularly enjoy two features of the chapters: The use of ample clinical vignettes throughout bring life and clarity to the fairly theoretical presentations of some content. These are clinical situations that we have all seen in practice and can immediately deal with—particularly if we struggled to care for them when we realized that their problems were common to a larger group. One of the last sections of every chapter is titled Toolkit and Resources and in this section are found important definitions and resource references, as well as discussion questions and case studies. These are directed to the graduate level nurse who is familiar with some of these problems and challenges and requires them to think analytically but to also remember the patients that they have worked with in the past and seek to apply specific information to those people in those situations.
Marilyn W. Edmunds, ANP/GNP
Editor in Chief
The Journal for Nurse Practitioners
Christine Frazer, PhD, CNS, CNE – :
In Population Health and Its Integration into Advanced Nursing Practice (2018), Bemker and Ralyea put together a textbook that is a must have for all Advance Practice Nurses (APN) and moreover, graduate nursing programs whose aim is to successfully arm nurses within the advance practice role to positively impact healthcare delivery. This book takes a deep dive into population health on a global scale, looks within eight specific vulnerable populations relevant to urgent population health issues today, and throughout the book, presents detailed information applicable to advance practice nursing care. For the educator and APNs mentoring others and/or looking to expand their knowledge, chapters in this book also contain case studies, discussion questions, current research findings, tool kits, and additional methods to enhance learning. Furthermore, chapters related to specific populations were extremely impressive. For example, within the chapter dedicated to the care of the military and veterans, the reader’s knowledge is heightened by the material pertaining to military culture, terminology, and stages of deployment as it relates to both the service member and the family. For those that need to gain a better understanding of the military culture and mental health issues such as Post-Traumatic Stress, substance abuse, and suicide, this chapter will most certainly fill that gap in knowledge. Additionally, the case vignettes presented in the chapter on substance use adds great value to current APNS within the field and APN students. As one reads about alcohol, caffeine, tobacco, cannabis, inhalant, opioid, and other substance abuse disorders, each vignette that follows heightens learning and critical thinking with thought provoking questions posed to the APN provider. The goals set for this textbook is unequivocally achieved; the APN will end up knowing “what to do — and when and where to do it.” Application to practice is, without equivocation, accomplished.
Christine Frazer, PhD, CNS, CNE
Walden University
College of Health Sciences; School of Nursing
Luis Enrique Espinoza, PhD, MPH, CHES®, CPH – :
The book is a new publication that examines population health in nursing practice. This is important, given that the medical community’s focus is often on pre-clinical interventions and preventive measures in certain patient subsets. The book is divided into two parts. The first examines the global aspect of population health, and the second delves into population health in relation to vulnerable populations. Further, the book provides an overview of how nursing has shifted its focus from supporting practitioners to promoting well-being and group-specific care to patients.
As a frame to the book, the Foreword, written by Edilma L. Yearwood, the past president of the International Society of Psychiatric Nurses and Chair of the Department of Professional Nursing Practice at Georgetown University School of Nursing and Health Studies, offers a clear and detailed rationale of how the treatment of the subject here is vital to nursing practice.
One of the main strengths of this text is to expand the notion of population health by including its effects on health policy and nursing education. Discussion questions are outlined at the end of each chapter and toolkit resources are furnished that invite readers to explore concepts in greater depth. This book has a chapter devoted to advanced nursing practice and another to nursing executives, which are important to population health and implementation for patients. The book takes a step further than other volumes by including a chapter on health coaching and its integration into advanced nursing practice.
Finally, by giving voice to a diverse range of nursing practitioners, the book does a service to the field by encouraging different approaches to population health, while cultivating an honest and open enthusiasm for how population health will change and enhance the profession. The writers are to be commended for identifying numerous at-risk populations, e.g., veterans, and explaining health conditions unique to them. This book should be a staple for any nursing population health course that analyzes and fosters the connection between health education and nursing practice.
Luis Enrique Espinoza, PhD, MPH, CHES®, CPH,
Assistant Professor, College of Health Sciences
Texas Woman’s University, Denton, Texas