Scaling up a community-led health promotion initiative: Lessons learned and promising practices from the Healthy Weights for Children Project.

The increase in overweight and obesity among children has emerged as an important public health issue. This trend has highlighted the need for accessible and novel approaches to support healthy weights for children and their families to prevent childhood obesity. The purpose of this article is to describe the iterative development and scale-up of a community-led, national-level project to promote healthy weights among Canadian children and families who may be experiencing vulnerabilities. In this project, the Healthy Together program was designed to engage families in an interactive program to support healthy lifestyles. The program also provides a platform for creating supportive environments for healthful lifestyles through practice and policy change. Based on a process evaluation, we describe the iterative development of Healthy Together from Phase 1 through 3 to shed light on processes shaping implementation and scale-up of the program. Lessons learned during each phase were used to refine the program and further expansion. Indicators of successful scale-up include the Healthy Together program's cross-jurisdictional reach and promising evaluation results in real-world conditions. The practice-based program scaling approach provides practical guidance for planning and implementing similar health promotion programs in diverse communities.

Outcomes of collaborative and interdisciplinary palliative education for health care assistants: A qualitative metasummary.

AIM: To explore collaborative and interdisciplinary palliative educational strategies and corresponding outcomes for health care assistants. BACKGROUND: Health care assistants are frontline staff who provide almost all hands-on care to seniors. Health care managers are responsible to provide ongoing support and a working environment conducive to health care assistants' abilities to provide quality, safe, evidence-based care. EVALUATION: A Qualitative metasummary of collaborative and interdisciplinary teaching strategies was conducted following guidelines developed by Sandelowski et al. (). KEY ISSUES: The gold standard of palliative care is interdisciplinary delivery of care, yet education is often monodisciplinary. Furthermore, evaluation of interdisciplinary continuing education is most often subjective via self-report questionnaires. CONCLUSIONS: Findings from 16 articles representing 15 studies conducted between 2007 and 2017 were grouped thematically and summarized. Collaborative or interdisciplinary palliative interventions offer health care assistants opportunities to debrief, build their confidence, and critically reflect on the importance of psychosocial care for patients, family and colleagues. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT: The metasummary provides six suggestions for managers who are considering implementing a collaborative palliative educational workshop and draws attention to the need to create contextual changes that support health care assistants to enact newly acquired knowledge and skills.

Development, Implementation, and Evaluation of a Curriculum to Prepare Volunteer Navigators to Support Older Persons Living With Serious Illness.

The purpose of this article is to report the development, implementation, and evaluation of a curriculum designed to prepare volunteer navigators to support community-dwelling older persons with serious chronic illness. The role of the volunteer navigator was to facilitate independence and quality of life through building social connections, improving access to resources, and fostering engagement. A curriculum was constructed from evidence-based competencies, piloted and revised, and then implemented in 7 subsequent workshops. Workshop participants were 51 volunteers and health-care providers recruited through local hospice societies and health regions. Curriculum was evaluated through satisfaction and self-efficacy questionnaires completed at workshop conclusion. Postworkshop evaluation indicated a high degree of satisfaction with the training. One workshop cohort of 7 participants was followed for 1 year to provide longitudinal evaluation data. Participants followed longitudinally reported improved self-efficacy over 12 months and some challenges with role transition. Future improvements will include further structured learning opportunities offered by telephone postworkshop, focusing on advocacy, communication, and conflict management. Overall, volunteers were satisfied with the curriculum and reported good self-perceived efficacy in their new role as navigators.