Public Health Nursing services are available to anyone in Humboldt County. Public Health Nurses serve families and individuals to better their health. We evaluate the health of you and your family and work with you to develop a plan to help in gaining real-life solutions to problems and difficulties. This is called "health promotion." Some of the activities involved in health promotion are programs such as vaccine or immunization, risk prevention, pregnancy and parenting and disease avoidance. Because we believe that knowledge is power, Public Health Nurses give attention to and focus on strengthening people and their families by giving them the information and guidance they need to help themselves. We make every attempt to try to help those who want to learn about behaviors that will enhance their own and their children’s health and well-being.

• Adolescent Family Life Program / Teenage Pregnancy & Parenting Network (TAPPN)
• Alternative Response Team
• Clinic Services and Immunizations
• Communicable Disease Management
• Public Health Nursing Home Visits
• Sexually Transmitted Disease Control
• Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS)
• The High Risk Infant Visitation and Enhancement Program (THRIVE)
• Tuberculosis Case Management

A two-way process that reviews, plans, applies, manages, checks and evaluates the needs of people and works hard to match them up with the services that can help them. A person’s needs can be met in a number of ways to meet their health, both physical and mental, and their safety needs by using existing local sources to provide good and successful results. Case management is a process which can involve any number of services with organized methods to succeed at reaching the goals that the person and their nurse have decided on together. For example: getting help with breast-feeding, getting your child’s shots so they can go to school, learning how to make your home safer so that you have less chance of falling.

• Public Health Nurse / Skilled Professional Medical Personnel level of case management
• A Home Visiting program
• Each family member receiving service has an Individual Service Plan with a focus on health (both physical and emotional) and safety
• Case management is family driven based on a strength and empowerment approach, family empowerment and positive role modeling

Public Health Nursing Practice:

• Focuses on entire populations
• Reflects community priorities and needs
• Establishes caring relationships with the communities, families, individuals and systems that comprise the populations that Public Health Nurses serve
• Is grounded in social justice, compassion, sensitivity to diversity, and respect for the worth of all people, especially the vulnerable
• Encompasses the mental, physical, emotional, social, spiritual, and environmental aspects of health
• Promotes health through strategies driven by epidemiological evidence
• Collaborates with community resources to achieve those strategies, but can and will work alone if necessary

The authority for the independent practice of public health nursing emanates from the California Nursing Practice Act and the American Nurses Association’s Scope and Standards of Practice for Public Health Nursing.

http://www.rn.ca.gov/regulations/npa.shtml
http://www.phf.org/Link/quad_council.htm