Azella C. Collins This is Me

Education

 View all 11 references Web References

1. 1. NBNA Officers

   www.nbna.org/officers1.htm - [Cached]

   Published on: 1/18/2008   Last Visited: 1/18/2008

   Azella C. Collins, MSN, RN, PRP

2. 2. The Post-Journal, Jamestown New York

   www.post-journal.com/community - [Cached]

   Published on: 2/14/2007   Last Visited: 2/14/2007

   ‘‘Many a black woman still see it as a gay white disease that does not impact black people," Azella Collins, NBNA vice-president, told blackamericaweb.com.

3. 3. Public Works: Career in Public Health Nursing - Featured Stories - Summer 2005

   www.minoritynurse.com/features - [Cached]

   Published on: 7/1/2005   Last Visited: 4/4/2007

   Even though it happened almost 30 years ago, Azella Collins, MSN, RN, can still remember one of the first patients she encountered when she was a young community health nurse working for a visiting nurses association. The man was living in a tiny apartment behind a printer's shop in inner city Chicago.
   
   photo Azella Collins, MSN, RN
   
   Although bedridden, he refused to go to a nursing home or live with relatives. When Collins walked into the apartment, rats skittered in the corners as the elderly man struggled to sit up. The scene was so horrifying that she feared the rats would jump up on the bed at night and nibble his toes.
   
   "I thought, 'when I leave here, this man is leaving with me,'" she recalls.
   
   Collins made arrangements with a nearby nursing home, whose director she knew, and persuaded the man that he needed to move to get the care he needed. By the end of the day he was out of the unsafe apartment and content in a clean bed in the nursing home.
   
   Collins, who is second vice president of the National Black Nurses Association, has been a community and public health nurse for most of her career and is now an administrator for the Illinois Department of Public Health's Illinois Perinatal HIV Elimination Program. Rather than working inside a hospital, Collins wanted to reach patients right where they lived, like the old man in the apartment, and to apply her skills and tenacity to help them get better.
   ...
   Collins, for instance, works with agencies around the state to coordinate efforts to eliminate perinatal HIV transmission. She helps the organizations plan their programs, develop budgets and leverage other resources to sustain their work. Her role involves a creative mix of training, coaching and support, she says.
   ...
   Many years have passed since Azella Collins helped the elderly man in the rat-infested apartment find a safer place to stay. Yet her passion for public health nursing is still as strong as ever. "I really do love this," she says.