NATCHITOCHES – Senior Bachelor of Science in Nursing students at Northwestern State University’s Cenla campus studied community health concerns surrounding a data center under construction in Boyce through a Level 5 community impact project.
The project was one of two major assignments completed during the students’ final semester in the Bachelor of Science in Nursing program. Throughout the nursing curriculum, students complete service-learning projects that combine education and service. During Level 5, students assess an assigned community for health or safety concerns before developing projects that address identified needs and advocate for residents.
“Our seniors in our BSN program are assigned a community area,” said Alicia Book, MSN, RN, campus director for nursing and allied health at NSU’s Cenla campus. “With a team of students, they will work on doing an assessment of that community identifying needs, safety, things that they see that are deficits in that community that prevent the individuals that live there from having the healthiest lifestyle or maintaining their health.”
Book said the projects help students recognize that nurses play a role in improving community health as well as caring for patients in clinical settings.
“When they identify those needs in the community, how can they as a healthcare provider advocate for the health and well-being of those individuals?” Book said. “You think of the role of a nurse as being that traditional inpatient person, but they’re so much more. They have a powerful voice as a health care provider to speak up, advocate and lead change in their communities.”
Student Matthew Delrie said his group selected the Boyce project because of his connection to the community and concerns residents had expressed as construction began on the data center.
“I chose this project because I am actually a resident of Boyce,” Delrie said. “Boyce is a rural community. The health literacy and health equity is extremely lacking in that area. The idea of a data center and some of the issues that are brought with it like water consumption, air pollution, rising cost of energy, all of these things can either prevent somebody from getting healthcare or physically make them more ill.”
As part of the project, the students developed an informational flyer outlining potential economic and environmental effects associated with data center development, including water and electricity use. They connected those issues to community health by examining how higher household costs, air quality and demands on water resources could affect residents’ ability to afford healthy food, access health care and maintain their health.
The group distributed the flyer at the Dollar General across from Y-Not Stop, a popular gathering place in the Boyce community, and used the information to guide conversations with local residents. Delrie said some residents shared concerns that were already addressed in the students’ research, while others were unsure what questions to ask about the development.
“Overall, the population of Boyce didn’t even understand what kind of questions to ask,” Delrie said.
Delrie said that became an important part of the group’s project. Rather than advocating for or against the development itself, the students focused on residents having access to information about the project and its potential effects.
“The overarching theme for our project was advocating for the data center to be forthright and honest with the statistics surrounding their project,” Delrie said.
Delrie said the project reinforced lessons students have learned throughout the nursing program about addressing factors beyond a patient’s immediate medical needs.
“I think it’s extremely important for nurses to get involved in projects in their own community because through our program here at Northwestern, we are taught that nurses treat the whole patient,” Delrie said. “Treating the whole patient involves, of course medicine, but it also involves looking at the external events and things that affect them on a whole entire level rather than just their symptoms.”
Christopher Moore said the group’s goal was to provide residents with information about the data center project so they could better understand what was taking place in their community and participate in discussions about its potential effects.
“The community, they don’t have a lot of education about the situation, so the purpose of our project was to make it known to the public and kind of give them information about what’s going on in their community so that they have the informed consent,” Moore said.
Moore said projects like the community assessment give future nurses experience identifying community needs, exploring possible solutions and advocating for residents.
“Without these projects, we simply wouldn’t be able to do that, so it is really beneficial for healthcare and really any profession,” Moore said.