Building community capacity for health promotion: a challenge for public health nurses.

The centennial celebration of public health nursing is a strong reminder of the tradition and practice of public health nursing's commitment to communities. Partnerships with communities give public health nurses fiduciary responsibility to be actively involved in public health reform to advance health promotion and health protection. Public health nurses must rise to the challenge to build community capacity through facilitating community participation, enhancing community health services, and coordinating public policy to achieve core public health responsibilities of assessment, policy, and assurance. This paper explicates strategies for building community capacity for health promotion.