An academic practice partnership: Building capacity to meet sexual health education policy requirements of a public school system

Abstract

The purpose of this clinical concepts paper is to describe the development, implementation, and evaluation of a formal academic-practice partnership between a large, urban, public school system and a college of nursing, based on the American Association of Colleges of Nursing's Guiding Principles to Academic-Practice Partnerships. The overarching goal of the partnership was to increase the school district's capacity to meet sexual health education policy requirements while providing graduate nursing students with an opportunity to work with a diverse population of youth during a public health nursing practicum course. As a result of the partnership, over 2,000 public school students (grades 5-12) have received comprehensive sexual health education and increased their knowledge by an average of 19.7-32.7%. In addition, 79 prelicensure, graduate nursing students have been placed at the public school system for public health nursing practicum and 100% have met all clinical objectives. As with any partnership, successes and lessons learned were identified. Discussion of both is included in this paper and may benefit other organizations considering entering into similar partnerships. Ultimately, academic-practice partnerships are an important mechanism to simultaneously meet the growing needs of community practice partners and nursing education programs, while strengthening public health nursing practice.