Purpose: To explore resilience in the context of whole-person health and the social determinants of health at the individual and community levels using large, standardized nursing datasets. Design: A retrospective, observational, correlational study of existing deidentified Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)compliant data using the Omaha System and its equivalent, Simplified Omaha System Terms. Methods: We used three samples to explore for patterns of resilience: pre-COVID-19 community-generated data (N = 383), pre-COVID-19 clinical documentation data (N = 50,509), and during-COVID-19 communitygenerated data (N = 102). Community participants used the My Strengths + My Health (MSMH) app to generate the two community datasets. The clinical data were obtained from the Omaha System Data Collaborative. We operationalized resilience as Omaha System Status scores of 4 (minimal signs or symptoms) or 5 (no signs or symptoms) as a discrete strengths measure for each of 42 Omaha System problem concepts. We used visualization techniques and standard descriptive and inferential statistics for analysis. Findings: It was feasible to examine resilience, operationalized as strengths by problem concept, within existing Omaha System or Simplified Omaha System Terms (MSMH) data. We identified several patterns indicating strengths and resilience that were consistent with literature related to community connectedness for community participants, and sleep for individuals in the clinical data. Conclusions: When used consistently, the Omaha System within MSMH enabled robust data collection for a comprehensive, holistic assessment, resulting in better whole-person data including strengths, and enabled us to discover a potentially useful approach for defining resilience in new ways using standardized nursing data. Clinical Relevance: The notion that how we assess individuals and communities (i.e., the completeness of our assessments in relation to wholeperson health) determines what we can know about resilience is seemingly in opposition to the critical need to decrease documentation burden, despite the potential to shift from a problem deficit-based assessment to one of strengths and resilience. However, a patient-facing comprehensive assessment that includes resilience and the social determinants of health can provide a transformative, whole-person platform for strengths-based care and population management.
Background/Context In March 2020 New York City became the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. By mid-March, nearly all the 6500 employees of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (NYC Health Department), the largest public health department in the nation, began working from home. Reports quickly emerged of the immense stress on hospital and public health systems, with critical personal protective equipment (PPE) shortages, lack of testing capacity, and strained emergency response. At the same time, NYC Health Department staff were hearing daily updates about a growing number of COVID-19 cases and deaths among New Yorkers. Agency home visiting staff learned that one of their colleagues had died from COVID-19, and two others became ill, with one requiring hospitalization. While in mourning for our colleagues and the city, it became apparent that, once again, Black and Brown people were disproportionately impacted by a health condition; in NYC the age adjusted rate of hospitalization and death among Black/African-American and Hispanic/Latinx people was twice as high as among White and Asian/Pacific Islander people.(NYC Health 2020a) Meanwhile the NYC Health Department continued to do its work serving pregnant and
Nursing terminologies like the Omaha System are foundational in realizing the vision of formal representation of social determinants of health (SDOH) data and whole-person health across biological, behavioral, social, and environmental domains. This study objective was to examine standardized consumer-generated SDOH data and resilience (strengths) using the MyStrengths+MyHealth (MSMH) app built using Omaha System. Overall, 19 SDOH concepts were analyzed including 19 Strengths, 175 Challenges, and 76 Needs with additional analysis around Income Challenges. Data from 919 participants presented an average of 11(SD = 6.1) Strengths, 21(SD = 15.8) Challenges, and 15(SD = 14.9) Needs. Participants with at least one Income Challenge (n = 573) had significantly (P < .001) less Strengths [9.4(6.4)], more Challenges [27.4(15.5)], and more Needs [15.1(14.9)] compared to without an Income Challenge (n = 337) Strengths [13.4(4.5)], Challenges [10.5(8.9)], and Needs [5.1(10.0)]. This standards-based approach to examining consumer-generated SDOH and resilience data presents a great opportunity in understanding 360-degree whole-person health as a step towards addressing health inequities.
ObjectiveTo characterize patterns in whole‐person health of public health nurses (PHNs).Design and SampleSurvey of a convenience sample of PHNs (n = 132) in 2022. PHNs self‐identified as female (96.2%), white (86.4%), between the ages 25–44 (54.5%) and 45–64 (40.2%), had bachelor's degrees (65.9%) and incomes of $50‐75,000 (30.3%) and $75‐100,000/year (29.5%).MeasurementsSimplified Omaha System Terms (SOST) within the MyStrengths+MyHealth assessment of whole‐person health (strengths, challenges, and needs) across Environmental, Psychosocial, Physiological, and Health‐related Behaviors domains.ResultsPHNs had more strengths than challenges; and more challenges than needs. Four patterns were discovered: (1) inverse relationship between strengths and challenges/needs; (2) Many strengths; (3) High needs in Income; (4) Fewest strengths in Sleeping, Emotions, Nutrition, and Exercise. PHNs with Income as a strength (n = 79) had more strengths (t = 5.570, p < .001); fewer challenges (t = ‐5.270, p < .001) and needs (t = ‐3.659, p < .001) compared to others (n = 53).ConclusionsPHNs had many strengths compared to previous research with other samples, despite concerning patterns of challenges and needs. Most PHN whole‐person health patterns aligned with previous literature. Further research is needed to validate and extend these findings toward improving PHN health.
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