On March 27, 2013, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Interdisciplinary Nursing Quality Research Initiative (INQRI) investigators Nancy Hanrahan, RN, PhD, and Phyllis Solomon, PhD, will present a webinar on their research translating a transitional care nursing intervention for people with serious mental illness for patients in public managed care.

The researchers’ Transitional Care Model for Persons with Serious Mental Illness (TCM-SMI) was designed to help psychiatric patients transition from hospitalization back into the community by providing 90 days of intensive hospital-to-home services. The nursing intervention proposed to reduce readmissions and depletion of scare public resources by these patients with complex needs.

The webinar will take place from 12-1 p.m. EST. It is part of a series featuring all of INQRI’s grantee teams focused on translating research into practice.

Register for the webinar.
Learn more about Hanrahan and Solomon’s research.

Jason Schnittker, PhD, and Chris Uggen, PhD, both recipients of Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Investigator Awards in Health Policy Research, recently published a study in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior on incarceration and psychiatric disorders. They found that incarceration increases the risk of mood disorders after release and that these disorders increase disability. Schnittker is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. Uggen is the Distinguished McKnight Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Minnesota.

More than 650,000 inmates are released from prison every year.[i]  Although their debt to society may be paid, their struggles have just begun.  Reentry is not easy.  Former inmates need to find a place to live.  They need to find a job.  And many need to support families.  All told, 4 million people in the U.S. are dealing with the “mark” of a prison record and its consequences for their work and personal lives.[ii]  Most will struggle for years following their release.

Given all these difficulties, it’s hard to imagine health being a major part of their struggle.  After all, many former inmates are still quite young and, for that reason, unlikely to suffer from major health problems.  Mental health is part of the picture, but usually considered through a different lens:  policy-makers ask how mental illness affects criminal offending—that is, what leads to prison in the first place—but rarely consider the pivotal role of mental health in making a successful return to the community. 

Yet the role of mental illness is just as relevant after release as before.[iii]

As a new generation of veterans returns home from Iraq and Afghanistan, many with severe psychological wounds, the health care system is stepping up with new ways to care for them. Nurses are increasingly taking on the role of providing the specialized care veterans need to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder and brain injuries, and efforts are underway to train more nurses to help care for them.

PBS recently profiled three nurses—one of whom is a veteran himself—who are working in veterans care. Watch the video below or view the full story here.

Watch Nursing our vets on PBS. See more from Need To Know.