With concise, focused coverage of nursing in the community, this easy-to-read textbook provides the essential information you need to know for clinical practice - from nursing roles and care settings to vulnerable population groups. It features a practical, community-oriented approach, with an emphasis on health promotion and disease prevention.

• Separate chapters on the various roles and settings for community health nursing, including faith community nurse, home health nurse, school nurse, occupational health nurse, and governmental public health roles, provides a comprehensive perspective on these fields.
• A detailed discussion of vulnerable populations presents theoretical, assessment, and intervention concepts to help you understand the unique issues of this group.
• Coverage of specific vulnerable populations includes clients in rural settings, migrant workers, pregnant teens, the homeless, those with substance abuse problems, and clients with mental illness.
• What Would You Do? activities strengthen your problem-solving skills and challenge you to apply chapter material outside the classroom.
• Case studies illustrate how key textbook concepts can be applied to real-world community nursing situations.
• Level of Prevention boxes identify specific interventions for primary, secondary, and tertiary levels of prevention and emphasize the importance of a preventive approach in community-oriented nursing.
• Evidence-Based Practice boxes focus on recent research findings and how they can be applied to community nursing practice.
• Healthy People 2010 boxes discuss how national public health efforts impact community health practice.
• Practice Applications present real-life community client situations followed by questions and answers.

• A new chapter on surveillance and outbreak investigation explores the importance of collection, analysis, and interpretation of health data to maintain public health and resolve problems in communicable/infectious diseases, chronic diseases, and terroristic events.
• A combined health education and group practice chapter discusses community- and population-level education within the context of families, groups, and communities.
• Enhanced coverage of the Minnesota Intervention Wheel introduces you to this public health nursing model and further explains the wheel and its components.