The purpose of this clinical concepts paper is to describe the development, implementation, and evaluation of a formal academic-practice partnership between a large, urban, public school system and a college of nursing, based on the American Association of Colleges of Nursing's Guiding Principles to Academic-Practice Partnerships. The overarching goal of the partnership was to increase the school district's capacity to meet sexual health education policy requirements while providing graduate nursing students with an opportunity to work with a diverse population of youth during a public health nursing practicum course. As a result of the partnership, over 2,000 public school students (grades 5-12) have received comprehensive sexual health education and increased their knowledge by an average of 19.7-32.7%. In addition, 79 prelicensure, graduate nursing students have been placed at the public school system for public health nursing practicum and 100% have met all clinical objectives. As with any partnership, successes and lessons learned were identified. Discussion of both is included in this paper and may benefit other organizations considering entering into similar partnerships. Ultimately, academic-practice partnerships are an important mechanism to simultaneously meet the growing needs of community practice partners and nursing education programs, while strengthening public health nursing practice.

Despite the long history of PHN working in communities to promote and maintain the health of vulnerable populations, practice outcomes have not been well documented. Further work is needed to: strengthen the methods for documenting effectiveness of PHN practice; focus on promising PHN interventions via multisite studies; and translate evidence-based PHN interventions to practice settings.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced the US health care system to evaluate alternative care delivery strategies to reduce the risk of coronavirus transmission to patients and health care providers. Telehealth modalities are a safe and effective alternative to face-to-face visits for primary and psychiatric care. Federal policy makers approved changes to telehealth reimbursement coverage and allowed flexibility of location for patients and providers. This article describes the transition of patient visits to telehealth by nurse practitioner faculty at an academic medical center to maintain continuity of care of underserved patient populations. This pivot facilitated resumption of clinical learning experiences for nurse practitioner students.

INTRODUCTION Integrated behavioral health is a model of health care that aims to meet the complex health care needs of patients in primary care settings. Collaborative Care (CC) is an evidence-based model incorporating an interdisciplinary team to improve outcomes for behavioral health disorders commonly seen by primary care providers. OBJECTIVE CC was implemented in a nurse-managed health center in a medically underserved community of Chicago with a team of family nurse practitioners, psychiatric mental health nurse practitioners, and a licensed clinical social worker. METHOD Integration of the CC model required restructuring of the patient visit, the care team, and financial operations. Weekly team meetings were held for interdisciplinary case consultation and training for the primary care team by the psychiatric nurse practitioner. The model includes suggested goals of reducing patient scores of validated depression (Patient Health Questionnaire–9) and anxiety (Generalized Anxiety Disorder–7) screening tools to a score less than 5 points or to less than 50% of original score. RESULTS During the initial year of implementation, 166 patients received care under the CC model, with 64 patients currently receiving active care. In this cohort, 22% reached suggested goals for depression and 47% for anxiety. CONCLUSIONS CC has benefits for both patients and providers. Patients receive holistic treatment of both mental and physical health needs and access to psychiatric services for medication initiation and behavioral health modalities when necessary. We observed that the CC model improved collaboration with behavioral health specialists and the competence and confidence of family nurse practitioners.

It is recommended that every student has daily access to a school nurse and that school nurses work in alignment with the Framework for 21st-Century School Nursing Practice (Framework). Little is known about Framework alignment with school nursing practice. The purpose of this study is to describe the alignment between the Framework and school nurse job descriptions in large, urban school districts across the United States. Using content analysis, with a directed approach, researchers used the Framework to analyze school nurse job descriptions for 16 school districts, analyzing 375 individual job responsibilities. The majority of job responsibilities reviewed (86%) were related to principles within the care coordination and community/public health nursing component, while job responsibilities within the key principles of leadership and quality improvement components were limited (14%). The Framework can be a useful tool to guide school nurse practice and however needs to be intentionally brought into job descriptions.