With topics ranging from dental care to cooking lessons, "Raising Health, Raising Hope" is a burgeoning program led by School of Nursing students that offers workshops on health at Genesis Home, which houses homeless families and children in Durham.
Following a chance meeting at a party for the Duke medical community, Ryan Fehrman, executive director of Genesis Home, and Dorothy Powell, director of the Global and Community Health Initiative in the School of Nursing, combined their efforts to address what they saw as a need for both a health promotion curriculum among Genesis Home residents and community-based service opportunities for nursing students.
"It was conceptualized initially as a service-learning experience that later also took on the additional potential of meeting clinical objectives for a required community health course," Powell wrote in an e-mail.
Currently, the curriculum of "Raising Health, Raising Hope" revolves around six monthly hour-hong workshops. The first cycle began during the second half of 2006, offering courses about topics such as nutrition, exercise and adolescent health.
Nursing students-who had to attend a workshop themselves and then complete an online training course in order to participate in the program-have taught all six workshops and will continue to offer them on rotation, said Laura Bax, student co-chair of the Genesis Home planning commission.
Students working in the program also earn credit toward their required hours of clinical work.
"We want to really provide the resources that are available for [Genesis Home residents] in the community, so that they can go and receive health care and just get support for health-related issues," Bax said. "For us too, it's good for students to promote health within a community setting outside of a hospital setting."
Fehrman said he had to give a lot of credit to the Duke nursing students because they "directly asked low-income clients what they needed and created a curriculum based on that."
And because one of the long-term goals of Genesis Home, which serves up to 12 families at a time, is always to move into permanent housing, Powell said that nursing students will continue to reassess the topics of interest to account for residential turnover and adjust the workshop curriculum accordingly.
Bax said the biggest challenge to the program is evaluating how effective it has been as a community health center, but that the response from both nursing students and Genesis Home residents has been very positive.
"[Students are] very much engaged with our parents and are forming relationships," Fehrman said. "I know some of the students and parents are on a first-name basis."
Fehrman also added, however, that there is a need for students to work as weekly volunteer tutors for the children of Genesis Home, who often double the adult population.
Powell said other future expansions of the program include a health fair for the homeless.
"The exceptionally positive relationship with the Genesis Home staff and board provides an opportunity to dream and strategize together on ways and avenues for helping people to regain control of their lives," she said.
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