An Introduction to Community and Primary Health Care

This chapter describes the role and activities of community health nurses and identifies the main focus of the role from a primary health care perspective. It also describes the process for identifying and responding to community needs, and provides understanding of the complexity and diversity of the role. In the 1970s, community health nursing emerged in Australia and New Zealand alongside the rise ofprimary health care. Primary health care shifted the focus from a disease model and treating illness to a preventative model focused on population and social health, community development, health promotion, illness prevention and early intervention. This created new roles for nurses with the evolution of community health nursing, sometimes referred to as primary health care nursing, as a specialised area of nursing practice.