Nurses as Intermediaries in the Promotion of Community Health: Exploring Their Roles and Challenges

An effective health care system needs to coordinate medical facilities with the behavioral and economic drivers in communities that are most related to good long-term health. Intermediaries can help this to happen by providing key skills and building trust between health care institutions and community organizations and residents. Nurses are among the most important of such intermediaries. They not only provide skilled health care services, but tend to be the closest to the patient and their family caregivers, and the most aware of their broader psychosocial and health care needs. There is a broad range of nursing specialties that play this role, from Clinical Nurse Leaders to school and parish nurses.

Stuart Butler and Carmen Diaz

Brookings Institution

September 21, 2017

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