Final answer:
Public health nursing focuses on protecting and improving the health of populations on a broad scale, emphasizing prevention and policy, whereas community health nursing works closely with individuals and families within communities to address health disparities.
Step-by-step explanation:
Public health nursing and community health nursing have different foci in their approach to health care. Public health nursing primarily revolves around the prevention of illness within large populations and aims to understand how disease spreads and affects those populations. Tasks may include tracking disease outbreaks, developing public health policy, and managing public health crises, placing heavy emphasis on the health of populations as a whole.
Community health nursing, while similar in its goals for promoting health, takes a tailored approach that focuses on eradicating the impact of health disparities due to socioeconomic, cultural, and ethnic factors. It pays closer attention to individual and family health needs within a community context, using methodologies like community-based participatory research to promote health equities. It also seeks to understand and address systemic inequities that have negative impacts on health.
Hence, when answering the question: 'Public health nursing differs from community health nursing in that public health nursing:', the most appropriate answer would be that it 'considers the individual as one member of a group'. This reflects the more population-wide scope of public health nursing in contrast to the individual-focused approach of community health nursing.