According to the 2011 National Transgender Discrimination Survey, 50 percent of transgender respondents said they had to teach a provider about transgender care. Where can providers seek information about inclusive care? Nursing@USC Professor Dr. Nancy Tkacs and other experts discuss reframing health care as a safe, inclusive space for patients.
When only 13 states in the nation require sex education to be medically accurate, students’ health literacy suffers. How can we make sex ed more comprehensive? USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work Department of Nursing professor Dr. Theresa Granger says everyone — nurse practitioners, teachers, parents — has to take responsibility.
The USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work has led a schoolwide initiative to increase awareness among medical and social work professionals about the challenges faced by homeless communities. We spoke to two USC professors who have held pivotal roles in serving homeless populations on the other side of the country for Baltimore’s Health Care for the Homeless.
California's medical providers serve approximately 25 percent of the nation's undocumented population. Their advice? “Enroll, use the services available, know your rights and stay informed.”
Health literacy measures how people access, understand and apply health information to their lives. Though the description is simple, the process of promoting health literacy becomes complex when applied to the global population. So how exactly do we turn big ideas into focused efforts? Nursing@USC asked experts in the public health space to discuss.
As front-line clinicians, nurses are ideal advisers to policymakers because they observe the opportunities and challenges faced by patients and providers daily, if not hourly. Of the many inspiring RNs in our nation, we're highlighting a few who have applied their unique clinical insight and advocacy experience to help shape public health policy through government, education and public service.
Alcohol dependency is often overlooked in older adults, especially women, whose symptoms often go undiagnosed by medical providers and caregivers. Nursing@USC Professor Dr. Benita Jeanne Walton-Moss — who has conducted research for her publication “Alcohol Use and the Older Woman” — says there is a profound need for health literacy surrounding alcohol dependency.
As the role of women in American society has evolved, so too have trends around cigarette and tobacco use. In the United States, even though female smoking is at a record low — roughly 14 percent of adult women are current smokers — smoking-related illnesses cause approximately 178,000 premature deaths among women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The common narrative in schools and beyond is that students from a lower socioeconomic status are at greater risk for substance use, but this understanding ignores the complex determinants at play behind the scenes. School nurses and family nurse practitioners are in a unique position to educate families and students about these complexities, dispel myths about prescription drugs and increase health literacy in school communities.
Health literacy - the ability of people to obtain, process and understand basic health information and health care delivery systems to make appropriate decisions about their well-being - directly affects every person's ability to live a healthy, productive life. Yet according to a report from the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), only 12 percent of American adults possess proficient health literacy, and 14 percent exhibit below basic health literacy.
