According to the Alzheimer’s Association, more than 94,000 Minnesotans over the age of 65 are living with Alzheimer’s. Another 243,000 Minnesotans care for an individual with Alzheimer’s or another form of dementia. The total cost of care associated with such conditions in Minnesota is $3.57 billion annually.

Unpaid caregivers provide the majority of care to patients with dementia or Alzheimer’s disease, and more than 60 percent of those caregivers rate the emotional stress of caregiving as high or very high. Worse, more than one-third of such caregivers report symptoms of depression.

A new University of Minnesota School of Nursing partnership with the Burnsville-Eagan-Savage school district is looking into what school nurses can do to help curb obesity in schoolchildren.

Slated to begin in fall 2014, research led by School of Nursing associate professor Martha Kubik, Ph.D., R.N.,  received a $3 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant to investigate how school nurses and other community health advocates can help address the childhood obesity epidemic.

The research “has the potential to inform public policy,” said Kubik in a Pioneer Press article on the announcement made at an early-May school board meeting. “If all goes as we hope it goes, it will expand access to obesity prevention programs for children and families.”

Second and fourth-grade students who are currently overweight and who volunteer alongside their families for the research will participate in a nine-month-long program. School nurses will lead the program charge by encouraging healthy food and activity habits through small group work with children and parents, one-on-one coaching sessions and collaboration with other groups that offer active play and healthy eating opportunities.

To read the full Pioneer Press article on the NIH grant award and its potential effects, click here. You can also check out the Burnsville-Eagan Sun Thisweek story here.

In honor of the 40th anniversary of the University of Minnesota School of Nursing’s nurse-midwife degree program, Melissa Avery, Ph.D., C.N.M., R.N., director of the midwifery specialty, reflected on how nurse-midwifery has changed.

Midwives have been attending births for thousands of years.

“But in the United States in the early 1900s, as the field of medicine became more formalized and specialized, birth started moving to hospitals,” said Avery. Midwives began to play a lesser roll.

It is no secret that young girls can be excessively cruel to one another when engaging in acts like teasing, taunting and rumor spreading.

However, a study from the University of Minnesota School of Nursing shows that mentorship and leadership opportunities for at-risk teen girls might help prevent social bullying and the other high-risk behaviors it can lead to.

New research from experts within the University of Minnesota School of Nursing has found teen girls at high risk for pregnancy reported being significantly less likely to participate in social bullying after participating in an 18-month preventive intervention program.

This research, in combination with University of Minnesota School of Nursing research findings from March 2013, demonstrate the preventative intervention program can reduce social bullying among all girls, including those who did and did not have strong family ties. Furthermore, girls in the intervention program were significantly more likely to enroll in college or technical school, actions that reduce the risk for involvement in serious violence during early adulthood …

Yesterday, the University of Minnesota’s School of Nursing celebrated the opening of a new, state-of-the art education center for nursing and other health professional students.

The Bentson Healthy Communities Innovation Center will provide students with new opportunities to engage in complex simulated health scenarios in interprofessional teams, use sophisticated telehealth technology and learn emerging health records technology.

The center is named to honor the lead gift made by the Bentson Foundation, which contributed $3.7 million to the $7.8 million dollar project. A $1 million gift from the United Health Foundation and other generous donations enabled rapid construction, which began in May 2012.