Model for community health nursing care: application to an integrated asthma intervention program

The article describes the use of a model for community health nursing care applied to an integrated asthma intervention program in an inner-city context. Asthma is a chronic childhood disease with broad physical, social, and economic impact on children, families, and communities. Despite recent advances in asthma understanding and treatment, morbidity and mortality continue to rise. This model suggests ways to combine individual, family, school, and community interventions to enhance coordination and increase the impact of services. It outlines needs and opportunities for collegial collaboration between professional nurses in varied practice settings. Application of the model to the management of asthma in the urban setting demonstrates the potential to produce significant improvement in the management of conditions such as asthma and highlights the key role that school nurses play.