Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Living in social or economic disadvantage is associated with negative health outcomes for Canadian families. Young mothers and their children are one such group at risk for suboptimal health outcomes, creating a significant public health concern. Rural living creates additional challenges for young mothers, some who are greatly in need of supportive nursing interventions. Rural residents have poorer health status, fewer available health resources, and greater difficulty accessing health services despite their significant need for primary health care. Public health nurses are ideally positioned to promote health behaviours intended to prevent illness, injuries, and substance misuse for families, especially those living in social or economic disadvantage. The Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP) is a targeted public health intervention program designed to improve child and maternal health through nurse home visiting. The purpose of this research is to describe and explore how rural geography influences the implementation and delivery of the NFP program in British Columbia, Canada. I will examine the experiences of public health nurses and supervisors delivering NFP in non-urban communities to provide an understanding of how the program is implemented within the context of rural geography. Because text-messaging clients is becoming necessary to facilitate delivery of home-visiting programs, I will also examine structure and content of the public health mobile phone communication policies and procedures. This exploration will help to understand if these policies are robust enough to support the ways in which public health nurses are using this technology. Knowledge gained from my study will contribute to the development of a rural model to inform the scale-up implementation of the NFP in Canada, including recommendations for telecommunication policy development.