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Center for Community Programs, Innovation, and Scholarship

The Johns Hopkins School of Nursing Center for Community Programs, Innovation, and Scholarship (COMPASS Center) serves as an operational umbrella for evolving Hopkins Nursing community education, practice, research, and policy initiatives. The vision of the COMPASS Center is to create a sustainable model for promoting the health and well-being of disadvantaged populations in Maryland through alliances with residents and integration with Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, other vested university groups, community-based organizations, business leaders, and health care organizations. Embracing the School’s core values of excellence, respect, diversity, integrity, and accountability, the Center leads and supports nurse-led community programs and initiatives that nurture its reach and impact to promote community health, health equity and advance nursing.

View the COMPASS Brochure   COMPASS Community Resource Directory

Community Outreach Program

The Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing Community Outreach Program (COP) provides community health nursing and other valuable services to individuals, families, communities, and populations in underserved local areas, with an emphasis on East Baltimore. The goal of the program is to improve the health status of urban Baltimore City communities and to provide services to disadvantaged populations. The Community Outreach Program is a student service-learning component of COMPASS Center, in partnership with SOURCE, the community engagement and service-learning center for the Johns Hopkins University Schools of Public Health, Nursing, and Medicine. Students have hands-on opportunities to serve in underserved and vulnerable communities in and around Baltimore City while they complete their nursing education.

View the Community Outreach Program Brochure

BIRTH COMPANIONS

Birth Companions is a course and program designed to teach students how to be a doula—a person who provides guidance and support to a pregnant person. Students first receive doula training from a DONA (Doulas of North America)-certified trainer and learn about maternal-child and public health from school faculty when they take the course.  After training, students provide emotional, informational, and physical support and serve as an advocate during the entire childbirth process—before birth, during labor and birth, and after birth—with continuous presence and complementary interventions. Our catchment areas include Baltimore City, surrounding counties in Maryland and Washington D.C. 
 

Learn More about Birth Companions    View the Birth Companions Brochure

Wald Community Nursing Center

The Lillian D. Wald Community Nursing Center, as part of the COMPASS Center operating sites, was founded in 1994 as the first Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing faculty directed service-learning program site in East Baltimore. The Wald Community Nursing Center and Outreach, as it is known today, is one of a few health programs in Baltimore City providing barrier free health and wellness services to low-income, uninsured residents.

The Wald Center works with partners to expand community access to wellness programming and promote health literacy and self-management. The Center also works to expand youth access to entry level health professions through work with local schools. Wald Community Nursing Center provides opportunities for student learning, faculty practice, research and scholarship through public health nursing interventions in partnership with community based organizations.

Learn more about the Wald Community Nursing Center   View the WALD Community Brochure

 

HENDERSON HOPKINS SCHOOL

In 2012, JHU School of Nursing was selected to provide leadership in implementing a coordinated school health program at The Elmer A. Henderson: A Johns Hopkins Partnership School and the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Early Childhood Center collectively known as Henderson-Hopkins when the school community moved to its new building and campus during 2013. The Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) combines elements of the traditional coordinated school health program (a CDC initiative) and the Whole Child Approach (an education initiative) to present a unified and collaborative approach to learning and health. This model focuses on the whole school, drawing resources and influences from the whole community and addresses the needs of the whole child. The primary way that the HH wellness program achieves this goal is through wellness programming for students, staff and families.

The HH School Wellness Program provides opportunities for Johns Hopkins Graduate students in nursing, public health and medicine to engage in service learning activities in the East Baltimore community.

Learn More about Henderson Hopkins School    View the Henderson Hopkins School Brochure

House of Ruth Maryland

COMPASS Center has a health suite on site at the House of Ruth Maryland, which provides a safe haven for victims of domestic violence and their children. Hopkins nurses and nursing students work with House of Ruth Maryland staff on the development and implementation of in-service training programs on health and social service needs of residents in the shelter. Referrals to community resource agencies and follow-up services to women and children living in the shelter are also provided.

Learn More about the House of Ruth    View the House of Ruth Brochure

Contact the Center for Community Programs, Innovation, and Scholarship

Please contact us at [email protected].