"Razoo Health": a community-based nursing education initiative

When statistics depicted a health crisis for people of all ages living in Louisiana, and New Orleans in particular, school of nursing faculty designed and instituted a neighborhood-based initiative to "Razoo Health." This initiative facilitated a paradigm shift from exclusively illness management to include health promotion and disease prevention. "Razoo," a local colloquialism used to claim an opponent's marble during game play, means to snatch or claim. Appropriately, Razoo Health refers to the intent of Louisiana citizens to reclaim and take back the health of the people in the cities' neighborhoods. Working with four inner-city parochial schools and churches as hubs, nursing faculty and students mobilize neighborhood assets, talents, and capacities to form partnerships for healthy change. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Coordinated School Health Model is employed within each neighborhood school to provide health care access, decrease absenteeism, raise test scores, and deliver worksite health programming to faculty and staff and to neighbors and parishioners. Nursing students work with citizens and students of other health care professions to learn community assessment skills and deliver primary, secondary, and tertiary services to individuals, families, and the community. Citizens wear crowns of empowered sovereignty as they take back, or razoo, what is rightfully theirs--health.