A survey was developed to identify participants’ primary social and economic concerns, with options such as housing, childcare, food insecurity, transportation, employment, financial stability, healthcare access, medical insurance, family/social support, and mental health. The most frequently reported concerns were housing, childcare, and financial stability, and participants also expressed interest in weekly blood pressure monitoring.
Based on these findings, a teaching plan was created to provide weekly educational sessions addressing both wellness and social determinants of health. Cardiovascular health was prioritized due to expressed interest in blood pressure monitoring, with instructional topics including hypertension management, nutrition, diabetes education, stress reduction, and smoking cessation (requested by the drug court coordinator). Community and governmental resources were integrated to address the top three participant concerns.
To evaluate effectiveness, pre- and post-assessments were implemented. Pre-assessments measured baseline knowledge, while post-assessments assessed retention and comprehension following each educational session, ensuring that participant learning outcomes were systematically tracked.
This statistical graph demonstrates that our teaching interventions effectively improved participants’ health knowledge and addressed identified knowledge deficits. Overall there was a 17% increase in health knowledge of these presented topics.
All participants are enrolled in the Norfolk Recovery Court program - the cohort we worked with are primarily African American males ages 20-69. This Program is an alternative to incarceration for non-violent offenders that are linked to their substance use disorder.
Mission: “The goals of recovery courts include: (i) reducing drug addiction and drug dependency among offenders; (ii) reducing recidivism; (iii) reducing drug-related court workloads; (iv) increasing personal, familial and societal accountability among offenders; and (v) promoting effective planning and use of resources among the criminal justice system and community agencies.” (Recovery Court Act)
The Program includes 5 stages:
Phase I Assessment and Orientation
Phase II Treatment
Phase lII Stabilization
Phase IV Maintenance
Phase V Aftercare
One of the main barriers to treatments of SUD is the lack of funding to keep programs effective, needed policy changes and financial support on research and on health maintenance.(Ware et al, 2025) Individuals living with substance use disorder or mental illness has shown a lower health literacy in comparison with the general population (Degan et. al, 2020) Further education on health promotion strategies and providing community resources will help aid their recovery
POSTER TITLE GOES HERE
Rachel Albers, Kristen Bennett, Brooke Fann, Willow Fitzgerald, Nataleigh Kramp, John Ordaz-Ramoz, Alexandra Rubalcaba, Micaella Quiazon
Macon & Joan Brock Virginia Health Sciences Ellmer School of Nursing at Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA
Background
Objectives
Methods/Planning/Process
Discussion/Recommendations
Conclusions
References
Contact:
Micaella Quiazon, mquia002@odu.ed
Alexandra Rubalcaba, aruba001@odu.edu
Nataleigh Kramp nkram001@odu.edu
Special Thanks:
We would like to thank our clinical instructor Suzanne Van Orden, our Recovery Court partners: Martha Shurtz and Michael Taylor, and all the participants!
Integrating Health Promotion Strategies in Recovery Court
The implementation of education and screening has been associated with positive outcomes within the aggregate of recovery court participants. While further research is indicated, there is some evidence that these interventions may be associated with increased success in the court-assigned rehabilitation program. Supportive findings include:
- participant reported decreased stress levels
- participant reported increased incorporation of health maintenance habits
- increase in health-related knowledge following educational presentations
Reduced stress levels are associated with decreased instances of relapse. Additionally, increased health knowledge and implementation of healthier habits is correlated with reduced hospital visits. This increases the participant’s attendance in the program. Overall, in working with this community aggregate we, the nursing students, have gained greater insight on their educational needs and barriers to program participation and success. Addressing barriers to program success requires comprehensive examination and intervention.
Results
After giving our presentations and evaluating their impact on our population we found that areas we could improve were:
-Having more physical material to hand out to participants to reference back to for the resources and information we presented
-Finding evaluation methods that provide more consistent and reliable quantitative data as some of our findings were inconsistent.
Recommendations for next steps: �-Involving community leadership and communicating our findings like common knowledge deficits and lack of program availability for things like community health or childcare, to provide incentive for change.