Kelley Newlin

African-American spirituality: A concept analysis

Culturally competent care for African Americans requires sensitivity to spirituality as a component of the cultural context. To foster understanding, measurement, and delivery of the spiritual component of culturally competent care, this article presents an evolutionary concept analysis of African-American spirituality. The analysis is based on a sample of multidisciplinary research studies reflecting spirituality of African Americans. Findings indicate that African-American spirituality involves quintessential, internal, external, consoling, and transformative attributive dimensions. Findings are considered in relation to previous conceptual analyses of spirituality and suggest that defining attributes of African-American spirituality are both global and culturally prominent. Implications for practice and research are discussed.

Coronary heart disease prevention and lifestyle interventions: cultural influences.

Unless action is directed to address the multiple influences on coronary heart disease (CHD) risk reduction behaviors, across all population groups, the aims of Healthy People 2010 with regard to CHD will not be realized. Health-promotion and disease-prevention models, including a framework for primordial, primary, and secondary prevention provided by an American Heart Association task force, and a model for interventions to eliminate health disparities are reviewed. The role of culture, ethnicity, race, and socioeconomic status and how these concepts have been studied in recent lifestyle interventions aimed at CHD risk reduction is explored. Finally, these findings are synthesized to provide suggestions for nursing care delivery in primary and tertiary care settings.

State of Research for Faith Community Nursing 2009

The aim of this paper is to report the current state of research for Faith community Nursing (FCN), reviewing the related research literature dating back to 1993. Over 20xa0years old, the practice of FCN is a maturing specialty practice that links religious communities and health through professional nursing, but no review of research literature is published. The review of the literature was done utilizing the Cumulated Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) and PubMed. The keyword terms selected for search were: faith community nursing, parish nursing, and/or church nursing for the years 1993–2008. The review identifies four major content areas in the FCN research literature: (1) development and implementation of FCN practices; (2) roles and activities of faith community nurses; (3) FCN evaluation and documentation; and (4) congregation perceptions of FCN. Overall, findings indicate the FCN literature documents successful approaches for developing faith community programs, provides descriptive analyses of this specialty practice and perceptions associated with the practice, yet inadequately addresses the relationship of FCN to patient outcomes. To advance the effectiveness for this growing specialty, emphasis must be placed on measuring FCN components and related outcomes with analyses yielding evaluative data on the efficacy of this practice in terms of educational, psychosocial, spiritual, and physiological care.

Pastors' wives as partners: an appropriate model for church-based health promotion.

Church communities are increasingly recognized as promising venues to reach African Americans regarding health matters. The church has been a pillar of strength and empowerment in the African American community since slavery, acting as the center for education, business, political activism, and religious exhortation.1 Because church pastors are respected gatekeepers, they are particularly well-suited for organizing and stimulating change among African Americans. Thus, it is essential to engage pastors in health disparities research efforts. Engagement of pastors alone, however, without recognizing the significant influence of pastors’ wives, may result in missed opportunities for intervention with African Americans, especially women. The role of the pastor’s wife in the African American church has remained unrecognized despite the severity of health disparities among African American women, and further, the centrality of pastors’ wives as change agents. In this paper,we present a church-based educational intervention, Project Sisters in the Spirit (SIS). Following a mixed-methods design, Project SIS was implemented to assess (1) the feasibility of a scripture-based educational intervention aimed at improving breast cancer screening among African American women, including lay church women and both pastors’ and deacons’ wives, and (2) the receptivity of lay church women to pastors’ and deacons’ wives as lay health educators. Findings suggest that engagement of and partnership with the pastor’s wife may be the appropriate model for church-based health promotion among African American women.

Willingness to be screened and tested for cognitive impairment: cross-cultural comparison.

Objective: The purpose was to describe (a) individuals’ reasons for participating in cognitive screening and (b) reasons to pursue testing after screening across 4 ethnic groups: African American, Afro-Caribbean, European American, and Hispanic American. Methods: Prior to memory screening, 119 adults were interviewed regarding their thoughts about memory screening and follow-up testing. Interviews were coded and differences between ethnic groups were compared. Results: More African Americans and European Americans were concerned about their memory. More Hispanic Americans planned to seek professional help if needed. Hispanic Americans were most optimistic about treatment. Conclusions: Future research is needed to better understand cultural factors that influence older adults’ willingness to be screened for cognitive impairment and to pursue follow-up testing when recommended.

Incretin-based therapies: therapeutic rationale and pharmacological promise for type 2 diabetes.

Purpose: To highlight the therapeutic promise of the incretin hormone glucagon‐like peptide‐1 (GLP‐1), the consequent rationale for therapies acting through GLP‐1‐mediated pathways in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), and the emerging clinical role of the dipeptidyl peptidase‐4 (DPP‐4) inhibitors and GLP‐1 receptor agonists. Data sources: The PubMed database was searched (using terms including incretins, GLP‐1, GIP, DPP‐4), along with recent ADA and EASD abstracts. Conclusions: Many traditional drugs used for T2DM fail to achieve and maintain glycemic control, and possess limitations such as risk for hypoglycemia and weight gain. GLP‐1 is a gut‐derived hormone that glucose‐dependently stimulates insulin secretion while simultaneously reducing gastric emptying and appetite. Other physiological actions of GLP‐1 may benefit the cardiovascular system and beta‐cell function. Recently developed drug therapies that mimic or prolong the action of this hormone, therefore, have great promise in the treatment of T2DM. Implications for practice: The GLP‐1 receptor agonists and DPP‐4 inhibitors are incretin‐based therapies that are now becoming established as effective therapies for T2DM to be used either as monotherapy or added to other antidiabetes drugs. They enable improvements to be made in glycemic control without weight gain, with a low risk for hypoglycemia, and with potential additional clinical benefits.

Assuring Nursing's Voice in the Electronic Health Record

Language is essential as a mode of communication to preserve and transmit knowledge and culture. The distinct language of a profession gives meaning to terms and expressions as well as knowledge of needs and appropriate responses in a given situations. Since Nightingales direction to record observations, nurses have built their language to record purposes, experiences and meaning of their practice. Today, the nursing voice is missing in reporting software; it is difficult to record the caring essence of nursing within electronic health records. There is a need for research and development of software to communicate nursing that takes place during nurse-client and nurse-community health encounters. A team of university professors and graduate students in nursing and computer science has joined to generate nursing practice research data for use in creating and testing nursing language software. Data reflect the complexity of caring in nursing grounded in a distinctive community nursing practice model. The software is intended to complement other electronic health records, assuring the voice of nursing in reporting health care. This paper emphasizes identification of the problem and literature review. The work of the research team, the research approaches and initial results are included.