‘Public Health Nursing- From Narrow to a Broader Perspective’

Manju Chhugani^*

Faculty of Nursing, Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi, India

*Corresponding Author:

Manju Chhugani
Faculty of Nursing, Jamia Hamdard
New Delhi, India
Tel: +919818141401
E-mail: manjuchhugani@gmail.com

Received date: October 12, 2015; Accepted date: October 19, 2015; Published date: October 26, 2015

Citation: Chhugani M (2015) ‘Public Health Nursing- From Narrow to a Broader Perspective’. J Comm Pub Health Nursing 1:e107. doi:10.4172/2471-9846.1000e107

Copyright: © 2015 Chhugani M. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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On behalf of the Editorial Board, it gives me immense pleasure to welcome you to the inaugural issue of the Journal of Community and Public Health Nursing. With great pride, enthusiasm, and anticipation, I invite you to read the inaugural issue of the Journal of Community and Public Health Nursing. Our team has firm belief that high-quality research is fundamental ingredient for developing policy and improving practice. Journal of Community and Public Health Nursing has been launched with the aim that this journal becomes a platform to disseminate research findings; to encourage young minds to engage with and be inspired by outstanding research. In the midst of the plethora of academic journals, I hope this journal will become the journal of choice for everyone related to public health nursing.

It is my expectation that this journal will give our proficient field an academic voice and an arena for dialogue that will move us forward clinically and academically. As such, we encourage submission of evidence-based original research focused on the wide range of public health issues.

An enormous amount of work has gone into the development of this journal and I believe you will see that efforts reflected in this as well as in the future editions to come. I believe that articles published and efforts made in this journal will have a profound impact on the field of public health nursing.

By the very virtue of India being the world’s largest democracy, its geographical size and high population of 1.28 billion, it has to encounter a variety of issues related to Community and Public health. The government has initiated a lot many programs to tackle the challenge but the effectiveness of these programs is hindered by the fact that Health is a state subject while Centre only enacts laws. The states lack to have a clear-cut policy on public health. The strategies of the states are mostly guided by the National Health Policy and the National Programs. Besides; there is no comprehensive legislation on environment and health. However, the State will have to play a central role in helping develop an organized system of health care as against the prevailing laissez-faire approach. The existing health care services will have to be restructured under a defined system. To facilitate such restructuring a well-defined system of rules and regulations will have to be put in place so that minimum standards and quality care are assured under a system. Thus the handshake between policy and implementation continue to be a difficult task to be addressed.

Indian Public Health Standards (IPHS) guidelines for strengthening the Public Health Care Institutions put in their best efforts to achieve high quality of health care across the country. IPHS is still a benchmark to be attained, India however has developed standards esp. in the field of Maternal and Child Health through RMNCH+A and is striving to develop other standards as well. Various Public health issues have been addressed through National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) that was launched in 2005 to solve the issues of the rural public. However looking at the universal need of the public health, it was changed to National Health Mission (NHM). NHM has since met many hopes and expectations. Also the increase in the health budget over the past years also indicates that the government intends to work for improving the health of the people. Hopefully public health will receive more attention due to it, in near future and with our joint efforts we will take standards of public health at par with developed countries.

Finally, I want to place my sincere thanks to all those who have contributed wholeheartedly to make this journal a reality. I hope that the research featured here will help in setting up many new milestones in the field of public health in times to come.

I look forward to our journey together as we develop the Journal of Community and Public Health Nursing into its fullest potential.