Family and Community Health
Faculty in the Department share a commitment to teaching, research and practice that embeds individuals’ experience of health and illness in the context of their families and their communities. We are particularly interested in exploring how we can strengthen the context in which nursing care is delivered to achieve health equity for all and healthy outcomes for those at different points along the health and illness continuum.
Global Leaders
The Department also defines our community as a global one. With our longstanding participation in the Global Network of World Health Organization of Collaborating Centers for Nursing and Midwifery Development, we can look to carefully crafted community-based participatory research to affect change.
The Department’s commitment to enhancing the experiences of families and communities leads inexorably to its commitment to diversity - diversity of thought, of experiences, and a faculty dedicated to eliminating the disparities that plague our health and educational systems.
It also leads to our unique emphasis on historical methods to understand, challenge and change the systems we have inherited from the past as we look to a more just and equitable future.
We also have a long tradition of interprofessional leadership in our teaching, research and practice. And we now seek the same in our education of students who will assume new roles in a changing healthcare environment.
Department Programs
Nurse Practitioner |
Advanced PracticeMinors |
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Cacchione to Receive 2024 Norma M. Lang Award for Scholarly Practice and Policy
Pamela Z. Cacchione, PhD, CRNP, BC, FGSA, FAAN, the Ralston House Term Chair in Gerontological Nursing, Professor of Geropsychiatric Nursing in the Department of Family and Community Health, and a Nurse Scientist at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center will be the 2024 recipient of Penn Nursing’s prestigious Norma M. Lang Award for Scholarly Practice and Policy. The award, given biennially to a Penn Nursing faculty member or a graduate from the School’s doctoral program who has made a distinguished contribution to nursing through scholarly practice, honors Norma M. Lang, PhD, the Professor and Dean Emerita of Penn Nursing, for her world-renowned contributions to health policy and practice.
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Supporting the Well-Being of LGBTQ+ Adolescents and Their Families
Penn Nursing’s Dalmacio Dennis Flores, PhD, ACRN, FAAN, Assistant Professor of Nursing in the Department of Family and Community Health, has been awarded a 2023 grant from the Hillman Innovations in Care (HIC) program. The $600,000 grant will be used to expand a Penn Nursing-led program that supports the well-being of LGBTQ+ adolescents and their families. This grant is awarded by The Rita and Alex Hillman Foundation.
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Integrating the Transitional Care Model into Nurse Practitioner Curricula to Improve Outcomes for High-Risk Older Adults
Managing transitions in care for older adults and their family caregivers, no matter the care setting, is especially challenging in a rapidly changing health care system. Patient discharges which typically require prescription writing, discharge summary creation, and team consultations for home care entail more complex coordination and planning.