Community Health Education and Promotion. - book review

AORN Journal, June, 2003 by Anne Marie Herlehy

second ed Mary Ellen Wurzbach, ed 2002, 660pp $54 paperback

This book is intended for graduate students and health care professionals. It discusses all aspects of community health education and promotion programs (eg, assessing the targeted community, creating and tailoring effective printed materials, managing program personnel) in a comprehensive manner.

The book outlines in detail how to plan, design, implement, promote, and evaluate a community-based health promotion program. It includes a list of professional organizations, web sites, governmental agencies, and definitional resources that would be useful to health educators.

This edition appropriately notes improvements and updates from the previous edition. For example, it emphasizes Internet resources and marketing community programs. It also incorporates the Healthy People 2010 guidelines. The basic framework for the book remains the same, using the nursing process as the approach to problem solving.

An educated nurse who obviously has worked extensively in community health education and promotion edited this book. It is written at a graduate level and includes advanced practice nursing highlights. Although the information is explained more than adequately, the chapters are too long and become difficult to differentiate. The illustrations and graphs are very informative, helpful resources. The physical appearance of the book is formidable because it lacks color (ie, all graphs and illustrations are in black and white); however, the content is valuable.

Overall, the book is an up-to-date reference for health care professionals who are developing, modifying, or evaluating community-based education programs for health promotion. It includes numerous definitions and sample forms that can be used to acquire grants, receive media publicity, or document community-based statistics.

With its many attributes, the book would be most beneficial to graduate students or advanced practice nurses specializing in community health nursing. It relies on readers' education levels and thought processes for comprehension.

This book is available from Aspen Publishers, Inc, 200 Orchard Ridge Dr, Suite 200, Gaithersburg, MD 20878; http://www.aspenpublishers.com.

ANNE MARIE HERLEHY

RN, MS

CLINICAL NURSE COORDINATOR

RUSH-PRESBYTERIAN

ST LUKE'S MEDICAL CENTER CHICAGO