Public Health Nurses as PFAS Community Resources
Public health nurses serve as trusted community health resources, providing preventive care, health education, and clinical support outside hospital settings. In PFAS-contaminated communities, they occupy a unique position: known to community members, present in community settings, and able to provide individualized health counseling that epidemiological reports and regulatory communications cannot.
Community health assessments in PFAS-affected areas — conducted by public health nursing teams in collaboration with local health departments — identify community health needs, document PFAS-related health concerns, and guide resource allocation for health services. These assessments provide the community-level data needed for public health resource justification and program planning.
Exposure Reduction Counseling
Public health nurses can counsel community members on practical PFAS exposure reduction strategies: water filtration options and how to access certified filters; fish consumption advisories for local water bodies; PFAS-free product selection for households with infants and pregnant women; and the importance of prenatal care that includes discussion of environmental exposures.
Effective counseling requires accessible, culturally appropriate communication that addresses community members’ actual concerns and constraints. For families with limited income, connecting them to free or subsidized water filtration programs, state-funded bottled water distribution during contamination events, and advocacy for utility-provided treatment upgrades is more practically helpful than general PFAS awareness.
Advocacy and Systems Change Role
Public health nurses witness the health consequences of PFAS contamination directly in their community work and are well-positioned to advocate for systems change — supporting utility treatment upgrades, pushing for appropriate regulation, and providing community members with information needed to advocate for their own environmental rights.
Documentation of PFAS-related health concerns by public health nursing teams — systematically collected through community health assessments — contributes to the evidence base for resource allocation and regulatory action. Connecting this community-level data to state and federal PFAS response programs ensures that nursing observations inform policy decisions.