Nursing students in Instructor Michele Mengert’s Mental Health and Community Concepts course recently completed their community advocacy projects as part of our fall, 2018 service learning opportunities. Michele said, “students are purposefully working to learn community oriented nursing. We want to target prevention as a priority. Nurses need to understand how to advocate for specific populations of people and have knowledge of the resource programs in your community that you can partner with to help your patients.”

This semester 20 students spent over 100 hours researching and collaborating with community partners on projects such as drug free communities, family resource centers, Alzheimer’s, poverty, mental health, breast cancer, obesity, domestic violence, sexual assault, and more. Students formulated detailed advocacy plans to address how a nurse could help a community identify and address these issues, providing education, awareness, advocacy and resources. Students gathered data to help determine strength and weaknesses in their own communities. Project presentations were held on December 21. Congratulations on all of this great work on important community issues!

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