Innovative Population Health Curriculum: Integrating Institute for Healthcare Improvement's Leadership and Organizing for Change Tools

In 2011, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and the RWJF released the report The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health. The report recommended expanding the capacity of nursing schools and redesigning education to meet both the current and future demands of healthcare, creating innovative solutions to healthcare delivery, and attracting and retaining well-prepared nurses in multiple health care settings (IOM, 2011). Reflecting on the need to develop population health skill sets to lead effective healthcare mandates, members of the University Division of Nursing’s three advisory councils, as well as the Illinois Critical Access Hospital Network (ICAHN), and the Public Health is Stronger Together (PHIST) work group, indicated a crucial need for nursing leaders and educators to have access to education centered on population health to impact rural and under served areas in Illinois (ICAHN, n.d.; PHIST, 2018). The work of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) along with the American Organization of Nurse Executives (AONE) identified academic/practice partnerships to position nurses to lead change and advance the health of the public. Partnerships must create sustainable, formal relationships at the senior leadership level and practice at multiple levels. Building meaningful relationships requires deliberate focus based on mutual goals, respect, and shared knowledge to prepare and enable nurses to advance health (AACN, 2018).

There is an especially pressing need to elevate nurses’ education levels and practice of population health. There are limited nursing programs that offer specialty curricula in Population Health. Recognizing this gap in the nursing workforce, the University’s Division of Nursing designed a new and innovative MSN Population Health Option accessible to the most remote areas of the state through online delivery (Illinois Center for Nursing, 2016). University partnerships at both the state and local levels provided the infrastructure for effective experiential opportunities for students. Participating healthcare organizations use nursing student ‘labor’ to facilitate population health improvements within their facilities/populations served while providing experiential learning opportunities for the students. By focusing on building strong partnerships between academia, public health efforts, and critical access hospitals, and beyond, the vision for the MSN curriculum centered on a population health specialty was conceptualized with the deliberate intent to elevate outcomes through student projects/experiential learning opportunities driven by the best evidence. With the intent to develop innovative curricula integrating the best evidence, permission from IHI was gained to access resources. The resources were infused through the MSN Population Health Option (IHI, 2018; IHI, n.d.). The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) activities/coursework encased within IHI's Leadership and Organizing for Change course was foundational and was integrated in the program. Thus; empowers students with the best evidence-based tools to create projects within organizations that serve those in rural and under served communities.

Through a multifaceted approach, this model program integrated student experiential learning, faculty expertise in collaboration/partnership building, engagement with key stakeholders from state level organizations, and guidance from national leaders in population health (IHI) to create innovative curricula based on best evidence. The focus is not only to develop and deliver innovative and relevant content and coursework, but to build critical infrastructure to support the practice of population health for the developing population health nursing workforce, thereby promoting program dissemination and sustainable positive outcomes for the most vulnerable organizations and populations (Osiecki et al., 2016; PHIST, 2018;US Department of Health and Human Services Health Resources and Services Administration, 2017). Basically, the University connected with partners, and worked collaboratively to catalyze the MSN Population Health Option to build the nursing workforce armed with evidence-based populations health tools to positively impact the communities/populations served.