Prepares nursing students to promote health and provide care for individuals, families, groups, and populations in the community with a special emphasis upon vulnerable populations. Strategies designed to promote the health of populations, guide populations to reduce identified health risks, and to shape health policy will be explored. The health promotion and disease prevention focus will be guided by Healthy People 2020 objectives. Principles of epidemiology, demography, environmental sciences, community organization, and health care political, economic, and legal influences are integrated with nursing concepts and principles to provide the basis for community nursing practice. Community and aggregate strengths and risks are identified through community health nursing process.

Critically examines perspectives in nursing and interdisciplinary fields relevant to phenomena associated with human responses to illness events, in particular chronic illness. Emphasis on variations on the conceptualization of these phenomena across health care disciplines and the relationship to assumptions underlying nursing science. Issues pertinent to measurement strategies and construct validity for these concepts as well as respondent burden within this population will be addressed. Practice implications evolving from the synthesis of this knowledge will be explored.