Community health nurses and parents of infants
All families in Denmark with a newborn child are offered visits by a community health nurse, who examines the child’s development and well-being and provides the parents with guidance based on the child’s needs and the parents’ wishes.
The parents’ experiences, considerations and concerns about the child, together with the community health nurse’s professional assessments, are included in the community health nurse’s advice to parents on how to support the child’s development.
Research in the healthcare service
For more than 75 years, community health nurses have been a cornerstone in the prevention of physical and mental health problems in infants in Denmark. But until a few years ago, systematic research into the work of community health nurses was limited.
However, close collaboration between community health nurses from a number of Danish municipalities and researchers at the National Institute of Public Health has paved the way for systematic research and quality development.
In this way, crucial new knowledge has been gained about basic conditions and possibilities for prevention with a starting point in municipal healthcare, not least targeting mental health problems early in the child’s life.
Prevention possibilities in the child’s first year of life
In the collaboration between community health nurses and infant researchers, we have explored concrete options for detecting mental health problems in infants as well as interventions to prevent the development of these health problems. We have done this as an integrated element of the general prevention work of municipal healthcare.
The result of this work is a comprehensive programme focusing on the psychological development and functioning of infants, the PUF programme.
Read more about the PUF programme here.
Community health nurses are paving the way for a new method
The research project Infant Health is built on a close collaboration with community health nurses in the following 16 municipalities: Albertslund, Allerød, Brøndby, Dragør, Egedal, Fredensborg, Gladsaxe, Glostrup, Herlev, Hillerød, Høje-Taastrup, Kalundborg, Køge, Roskilde, Rudersdal and Vejle.
The leading community health nurses from these municipalities have had a crucial influence on the development of the project. They are an integral part of the ongoing planning, coordination, monitoring and evaluation of the project. The leading community health nurses are also represented in the project’s steering committee.
In addition, a selected group of community health nurses from the project municipalities has participated in the development of the VIPP-PUF initiative, which is a parent-based initiative in which community health nurses help parents to strengthen the development of children with vulnerabilities in the regulation of one or more of the following areas: sleep, eating, emotional expression, concentration, attention, motor functions as well as language, contact and communication.
Read more about the VIPP-PUF initiative here.
VIPP-PUF is based on the internationally validated method the Video-feedback Intervention to promote Positive Parenting (VIPP), which has been adapted to the PUF programme.
VIPP-PUF has been developed in close collaboration with the researchers behind VIPP from the Institute of Education and Child Studies, Leiden University in the Netherlands, which is also responsible for training and supervision of the community health nurses who are trained in VIPP-PUF during the project period. Between two and four community health nurses from each project municipality have been trained and certified in VIPP-PUF, and during the project period these community health nurses are responsible for carrying out the VIPP-PUF courses with the families.
In a VIPP-PUF course, the community health nurse conducts six home visits over a three-month period between the child’s ninth and fourteenth month of life. The PUF study forms part of the focal point of the course. In addition, a VIPP-PUF manual has been developed that ensures a uniform and standardised procedure in all courses.
Community health nurses as active researchers
The project group behind Infant Health includes researchers with a background in community health nursing. In addition, a group of project community health nurses from the participating municipalities are included in the project group.
These community health nurses have a specific function in relation to the development, implementation and quality assurance of the PUF programme and the VIPP-PUF initiative.
Read more about the project group here.