ABSTRACT
Historically, community-based health care has been mostly conducted by community health nurses. Organized public health efforts are associated with the sanitary revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Through the written work of Florence Nightingale, students have learned of her accomplishments and concerns about the impact of environmental contaminants on health, community assessments, and her use of statistical information regarding sanitation disposal behaviors and community census data (Nies and McEwen, 2001). In addition, public health nursing, through the concept of district nursing in England, developed by providing nursing care to the poor and by community organizing, which allowed the poor to improve their own health status. Societal health was ultimately improved through the slow introduction of health nursing and eventual establishment of nursing education.
