Community Health

A EURO symposium in 1966 defined community health as including "all the personal health and environmental services in any human community, irrespective of whether such services were public or private ones."

Community health nursing

"Science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life, promoting health and efficiency, through organized community effort for the sanitation of the environment, control of communicable diseases, the education of individuals in personal hygiene, the organization of medical and nursing services for the early diagnosis and preventive treatment of disease, and the development of the social machinery to ensure everyone a standard of living adequate for the maintenance of health, so organizing these benefits as to enable every citizen to realize his birthright of health and longevity"                           
- Dr. C.E. Winslow

"Art of applying science in the context of politics so as to reduce inequalities in health while ensuring the best health for the greatest number "                           
- WHO

The goal of community health nursing

• Meet the community
  It is first necessary to meet the community, in order to;  establish contact with community leaders, and existing institutions and obtain the consent of the local leaders for a baseline survey of the health situation.
• Various approaches may be used to identify community health problems and health needs; they include:
  1. Base-line survey
  2. Scrutining the records of PHC and subcentre
  3. Specific questions regarding diseases common in area
  4. Questions regarding births, deaths, disability, failure to work, etc.
• Setting priorities among health problems
  Four criteria are used for setting priorities among health problems:
  1. The frequency with which the problem occurs
  2. The seriousness of the problem for individuals and society
  3. The urgency of the problem
  4. Feasibility or susceptibility to control the problem within the financial resource limitations.
• Planning and problem solving:
  The community health nurse is responsible for determining the appropriate course of action and the health team's ability to carry it out. During the planning phase, you will be asked to consider issues like goal-setting and the identification of potential approaches to the problems.
• Intervention or Implementation:
  The community health nurse caries out activities decided upon as being most effective, in order to fulfill the recognized need. This phase contains all the tasks, procedures and practices which are performed by nurses.
• Evaluation:
  Evaluation will measure the extent to which the problem has been solved or the need met. Evaluation provides "feedback" that can lead to  program more effective.

Public health

Mark Salmon White (1982) describes a public health as an organized societal effort to protect, promote and restore the health of people and public health nursing as focused on achieving and maintaining public health.

Public health is "the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts and informed choices of society, organizations, public and private, communities and individuals."

Public Health Nurse:

The American Public Health Association/ Public Health Nursing Section (2003) defines public health nursing is the practice of promoting and protecting the health of populations using knowledge from nursing, social, and public health sciences.