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The AARP Center for Health Equity through Nursing^SM (A-CHEN) is seeking nurses, working or retired, to mentor nursing students from underrepresented communities. A mentor is defined as a wise and trusted counselor or teacher, a tutor, advisor, or coach. Mentors can also serve as role models. Nurse mentors are volunteers who commit to serve as a positive, professional role model for nursing students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic-serving institutions, and American Indian/Alaska Native schools.

A-CHEN serves as a vehicle for change and a national resource, hosting specific programs and activities that align with AARP’s health equity priorities, including the Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action, an initiative of AARP Foundation, AARP, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

For the past several years, the Campaign for Action has worked with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Health Resources and Services Administration, Indian Health Services, and other federal offices to prioritize diversifying the nursing workforce and support schools of nursing with creating or updating their mentor programs. Most recently, the Campaign hosted a mentor-training workshop with Hispanic and American Indian/Alaska Native-serving Institutions. It also held a nursing track at the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities’ (HBCU) 2019 National HBCU Week Conference.

“The work the Campaign is doing could not be more urgent,” said Deborah C. Stamps, EdD, MBA, MS, RN, GNP, NE-BC, founder and chief executive officer of Deborah Stamps Consulting, LLC. “About half of all Black and Latino students entering four-year colleges fail to complete their degrees. When students fail out of nursing programs, they suffer, our health care system suffers, and stubborn health disparities persist. Mentoring is a proven retention and success strategy. Mentoring is going to get us to a more diverse and representative nursing workforce,” said Stamps, who has more than 30 years of progressive health care leadership and is a recognized authority on workforce development, diversity, equity, inclusion, justice, nursing education, and leadership.

A-CHEN is now leveraging this mentoring program through a partnership with the AARP Office of Volunteer Engagement, which is recruiting mentors to work with nursing students through a portal on AARP’s website. Interested active or retired nurses will be prompted to sign up and then complete a questionnaire that takes about fifteen minutes. It asks about an applicant’s education and professional experience in nursing, their areas of specialty, their hopes for serving as a mentor and concludes with some demographic information.

The AARP mentoring team will follow up with a few more questions, match eligible volunteers with a participating nursing school in their area, then invite the mentors for some trainings in preparation for their service. There are also quarterly learning collaborations and check-ins for every participating mentor.

Mentoring has tangible benefits for the mentor. In addition to the pride in being a part of someone else’s growth and development in the nursing profession, mentors have the opportunity to grow their own skills such as listening, accepting feedback, problem-solving, and leadership. Mentors learn new things about their own fields, about themselves, and about – and from – their mentees.

People who are interested in applying can go to the AARP Volunteer Portal for the Nurse Mentoring Program.

For background on the Campaign’s mentoring program, visit this landing page: /mentor-training/.

The AARP Center for Health Equity through Nursing serves as a vehicle for change and national resource for advancing health equity.  CCNA is an initiative of AARP Foundation, AARP and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and it runs the Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action, an initiative of the same organizations building a healthier America through nursing. Since its founding in 2007, CCNA has created national and state multi-sector networks to stimulate collaboration, innovation and spur action for better health and well-being through nursing.

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On February 2, 2023 the Pennsylvania Action Coalition had the pleasure of attending the 35th Annual National Black Nurses (NBNA) Day on Capitol Hill with students from the Pennsylvania Action Coalition Cohort of Exchanged Learning (PA-ACCEL) Mentorship Program. The PA-ACCEL Mentorship Program was created by the Pennsylvania Action Coalition’s Nurse Diversity Council (PA-NDC) in partnership with Lincoln University’s Department of Nursing with the goal of bolstering nursing students’ capacity to be successful both in nursing school and in their transition to professional nursing practice.

The NBNA forum was dedicated to congressional health issues and policy.  Student mentees from the PA-ACCEL Mentorship Program, learned about seven key legislative priorities advancing health equity. These legislative topics included:

1. Ensuring Health Equity: Supporting the Nursing Workforce
2. Gun Violence: America’s Continued Crisis
3. Obesity: America’s Health Calamity
4. Suicide: A Mental Health Catastrophe
5. Equity and Wellness:  Climate and Environmental Justice
6. Criminal Justice Reform and Health Inequities
7. Time to Reckon with Black Maternal Health

The nursing students, along with members of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Area Black Nurses Association, educated legislators on these advocacy topics. They heard from Congressional Black Caucus members regarding promoting health equity. It was especially poignant to hear from Representative Lauren Underwood, herself a registered nurse from Illinois. We also heard from the following representatives: Summer Lee (PA), James Clyburn (SC), Terri A. Swell (AL),  Jonathan Jackson (IL), Jasmine Crockett (TX), Donald Payne (NJ), Lisa Blunt Rochester (DE), Robin Kelly (IL), and Bennie G. Thompson (MI).

We were carried away by the energy of these esteemed guests, but it was even more inspiring to hear from the students about their experiences.

Elizabeth Gomez, a senior nursing student at Lincoln University said, “This experience will always remind me of my duty as a nurse, to serve and lead people to better health while ensuring equity. I’m thankful to be part of such leadership.”

Her classmate, Jordyn Sanders, shared that, “Capitol Hill was a great eye-opening experience on public health crises that we as nurses can aid in demolishing! Great networking!”

We look forward to offering this experience to more students in the cohort for the upcoming academic year. We will be expanding our PA-ACCEL mentorship program to also include students in the Independence Blue Cross Foundation’s Healthcare Scholars Program. The Healthcare Scholars Program creates a regional pathway from local high schools to college to increase underrepresented groups in the nursing profession. Through this program, underrepresented students pursuing an undergraduate degree in nursing will receive full academic scholarships. Selected nursing schools in the Southeastern Pennsylvania region participating in the Nurses for Tomorrow grant will be awarded up to $35,000 per year for funding for tuition and fees for undergraduate nursing students pursuing an Associate’s Degree in Nursing (ADN) or Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN). The PA-ACCEL Mentorship Program is funded by the Independence Blue Cross Foundation and the PA Action Coalition and receives in-kind support from the PA-NDC. The PA-ACCEL Mentorship Program Support Team is led by: Monica J. Harmon, MSN, MPH, RN;  Adriana Perez, PHD, CRNP, ANP-BC, FAAN, FGSA; Vilma Davis, PNP, BC, PHD; Chavon Crampton, MSN, RNC-MNN, CLC, EFM-C; Shukriyyah Mitchell-Hinton, BSN, RN; Saumya Ayyagari, MSN, MPH; Zaharaa Davood, MPH; and Jennifer Gimbel, MBA.

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What actions can nurses take to advance health equity?

Answers to this question were the focus of Building Equity in Nursing and Health Care Leadership, a December 1 summit sponsored by AARP and the Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action, an initiative of AARP Foundation, AARP, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Sponsors included AHIP, The Leapfrog Group, UnitedHealth Group, and The Joint Commission.

Summit participants included frontline nurses; nurse managers, educators, and employers; leaders in government, business, and professional organizations; and members of the Campaign’s state Action Coalitions, who are at the forefront of advancing health equity. Their calls to action were personal, programmatic, or focused on policy. Here are a few highlights of what they said.

Nurses need a stronger voice, said Mix, who believes all nurses have a role to play in advancing health equity. In her keynote address, she said the COVID-19 pandemic had produced a shift in nurses’ sense of self-worth. “Nurses have seen how valuable we actually are,” she said. “We have to do a better job of helping people understand what it means to be a nurse and the value that [we] add.”

Another powerful call to action came from Tasheeba Mongeon, who works at a federally qualified health center in Rochester, NY. Mongeon described what she learned caring for underinsured patients, many of them Black patients.  “It’s really not fair for us to judge anyone else…because we don’t know what happened to that person. No one wakes up and says, I want to be homeless today. No one wakes up and says, I may harm myself today,” Mongeon told attendees. How does she view her job as a Black nurse concerned about health equity? “To advocate for [my patients], to provide support, to jump in there before something happens.”

Beard recalled conversations with her grandfather, a Black man who refused to seek health care despite his cancer-related pain because “they don’t treat me the way that I should be treated,” he told her. Beard called racism “the elephant in the room,” and said the time had come for institutions to decide who within their ranks will take responsibility for addressing the problem.

Diversifying the health care workforce to address disparities in care is a strategy the Campaign has long embraced, but its implementation is still a work in progress. Another summit panelist, J. Margot Brooks Carthon, PhD, RN, FAAN, Tyson Endowed Termed Chair for Gerontological Research and Associate Professor of Nursing, University of Pennsylvania, proposed a related call to action. She urged nurse researchers to examine what specific skills and strategies nurses of color employ with their patients and for these effective practices to be standardized. “Are they building trustful relationships? Is it something about their communication patterns? Are they using deep, different teaching or motivational interview tactics? It’s not that they just show up in their melanated skin and they’re magic.”

How can a health system advance health equity? Luminis Health offers vivid examples.

1. It adopted a version of the National Football Association’s Rooney Rule, requiring search committees to recruit a qualified candidate with an ethnic-minority background for the finalist pool of every leadership vacancy in the health system.
2. Luminis got rid of a tardiness policy that disproportionately resulted in the termination of staffers using public transportation. Many of these employees were people of color.
3. When Luminis realized it wasn’t reaching people of color during the COVID-19 pandemic, the health system upended the prevailing policy of requiring a doctor’s appointment and referral for a COVID-19 test or vaccine. The system opened the first drive-up, walk-in test site in their community—no appointment needed. Then they went to barber shops, food distribution sites, and day-laborer gathering points “to truly meet people where they were,” Richmond said.

The health system continues to engage in rapid-cycle improvement to make its service delivery more equitable, in part through the Leaders in Equity and Diversity (LEAD) Collaborative, an initiative spearheaded by Meritus Health and Luminis Health with AARP’s support. “There is urgency,” to advancing health equity, Richmond said. “We have just gone through a pandemic, and it’s not over. And guess what? Racism is our second pandemic that we have to address as urgently as we have been addressing COVID.”

“We all have to [focus] on data, because data is what’s going to show that impact,” Jerde told summit attendees. To track where and how many United Health Group enrollees are referred to community-based services, the insurer created an ICD-10 medical code to track referrals related to social determinants of health.

Data is prioritized at RWJBarnabas Health in New Jersey as well. They track activities related to health equity using 33 performance metrics, 15 of which sit on a scorecard. “Executive compensation is tied to those metrics,” said DeAnna Minus-Vincent, MPA, Executive Vice President, Chief Social Justice and Accountability Officer, RWJBarnabas Health. “That’s why accountability is in my title.”

Elevating data collection and the self-reporting of demographic information is critical to advancing health equity, in the view of Rear Admiral Mix. “How can you say that you’ve had an impact on a particular population if you haven’t collected the data that actually tells that story?” she asked.

Richmond, President at Luminis, agreed but cautioned those in attendance not to become paralyzed by the search for perfect data. They should set priorities and act when the data is “good enough.”

As an accrediting body most closely associated with efforts to improve patient safety and the quality of care, The Joint Commission’s decision to make health equity its number one strategic priority speaks volumes. “We’ve been bold enough to say, this is [about] quality and patient safety. [Health care organizations] cannot choose to address central line infections and not address disparities in health care,” McKee asserted.

In January 2023, her organization will release a set of requirements aimed at reducing health care disparities. Every health care organization will need to put leadership in place to address the disparities and collect data to demonstrate the impact of health equity initiatives. McKee said some health care entities are already engaged in these activities, others want to be engaged but don’t know what to do, and still others don’t believe they have a problem. “That’s what makes this work really challenging and interesting,” she said.

For many nurses, speaking out can be hard. “We don’t want to say anything for fear of retaliation, because if I talk up, then I might lose my job,” said Taquana Holley, DNP, MSN, RN, Clinical Educator, Critical Care for the Center for Professional Development Innovation and Research, Monmouth Medical Center. She urged other nurses to overcome that fear. “Sometimes you have to kick down the door and let them know, Hey, I’m here, and I’m telling you, I want to do this.”

Many of the participants also called on nurses to be mentors and sponsors, develop leadership pipelines, and build their own support teams. Jean Accius, PhD, Senior Vice President, Global Thought Leadership, AARP, who was instrumental in supporting the summit, urged attendees to build relationships that bridge divides. “Identify someone in our workplaces, who doesn’t look like us, who is not from our background or walk of life, and create an opportunity for mentorship and reverse mentorship. You both will benefit,” he said.

These calls to action were music to the ears of Campaign leaders.

Several panelists urged everyone in attendance to read the Future of Nursing report and to use the Campaign’s Health Equity Toolkit. Since the National Academy of Medicine released its 2021 report, The Future of Nursing 2020-2030: Charting a Path to Achieve Health Equity, the Campaign’s state Action Coalitions and other stakeholders have been working to spur action on the report’s recommendations. To facilitate this effort, the Campaign created a Health Equity Toolkit with resources and information to help communities address the social determinants that influence people’s health and an Action Hub with additional resources. Both can provide a foundation for health equity initiatives by individuals and groups.

The health equity summit was organized by Winifred Quinn, PhD, FAANP(H), FAAN, Director, Advocacy & Consumer Affairs, Center to Champion Nursing in America (CNNA), an initiative of AARP Foundation, AARP and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation that runs the Campaign for Action, and Mary Anderson, JD, Director, Advocacy, AARP Illinois. Reflecting on the gathering, Quinn observed, “This event was an important step in engaging a variety of stakeholders in the effort to improve care quality and outcomes and to advance health equity through a robust, diverse nursing workforce.”

Jazmine Cooper, MBA, CCNA’s Project Advisor for Advocacy & Consumer Affairs, who served as the event’s emcee, noted that mentoring was highlighted as a key strategy for building that workforce, and she expressed optimism about the future. “We will continue to create a safe space to have difficult conversations and explore solutions to address health disparities, racism, and improving health equity,” she said.  

Fauteux is founder and principal at Propensity, LLC, a communications firm serving educational institutions and nonprofits focused on health care, health policy, and the health professions.

Reinhard is senior vice president and director of AARP Public Policy Institute and chief strategist for the Center to Champion Nursing in America and Family Caregiving Initiatives.

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As the calendar flips to August, America’s schools are preparing for a new academic year, the fourth one impacted by COVID-19.

School nurses are the front lines of public health and primary care, and the Campaign is pleased to share two blogs from a global school nurse researcher and board-certified advanced public health nurse who advocates for children living in vulnerable populations. The focus is the role of school nurses in addressing health inequities and mental health.

Before COVID, about one-third of the visits to the school nurse were for mental and emotional health concerns. Many times, the students had physical symptoms such as headaches and stomach aches, which were somatic symptoms for underlying stress and anxiety. In response to the volume of visits for emotional needs, some innovative solutions have emerged. For example, one school nurse worked with her school counselor to develop a program that taught children how to identify and manage stress and anxiety. Many of the techniques were taught to parents so the skills could be reinforced at home. And one school district created threat assessment teams at the district and school level consisting of a school nurse, school psychologist, school social worker, and school counselor. The team monitored each school and provided training to meet mental health concerns in their school. These are two examples of how school health was addressing the growing rise of mental health concerns before COVID.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), during the pandemic, one in three youth reported poor mental health, with nearly half being consistently sad or hopeless. The American Academy of Pediatrics, Children’s Hospital Association, and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry declared the U.S. to be in a national emergency related to mental health, while the U.S. Surgeon General indicated we are in a crisis. Calls have been made for increased mental health services for school-age children, with 38 states passing legislation to address mental health in schools. The laws vary in scope: some address health education, others fund increased services, and other laws focus on providing mental health training for school staff. Taskforces have been developed and solutions such as increasing screening and providing students with mental health days have been discussed.

What has been missing from the discussion is a holistic approach for addressing mental health, as well as the policies that may or may not be in place to support and sustain mental health in schools. Many of the mental health concerns students are facing are due to variety of reasons such as family economic struggles, disruption of their lives due to COVID and subsequent social isolation. These social factors are in addition to other causes such as pre-disposition, underlying chronic conditions or increased screen times. Researchers have found evidence that social media and internet use also impacts adolescents’ mental health, particularly girls.

The reality is a multi-pronged approach is needed to combat the current mental health crisis in schools. Traditionally, many aspects of school health have been siloed, where teachers, nutritionists, mental health workers, nurses, and others each focus on their own expertise but do not coordinate efforts. Community involvement, which brings in many providers, does not always work with or leverage the existing school health system. The CDC  developed a Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) model to emphasize the need to coordinate efforts. Students are whole persons with multiple forces at play. If we only address one aspect, we only put a band-aid on the situation.

The Center for School Health Innovation & Quality, a new initiative to advance the science and profession of school health, especially school nursing, in order to better serve all students, including those from underserved groups, recently worked with a Doctorate of Nursing Practice Student at George Washington University.

The student looked at the impact of mental health policies and school health services in context to the WSCC model. She investigated schools and districts in three different states to learn the influence of polices on school health services. She found various examples, many of which began before COVID, such as the two mentioned above. In addition, she learned of a school district that hired a school nurse manager to coordinate students’ mental health concerns after they were released from the hospital and were back in school. The nurse manager worked with teachers and families to address the social needs impacting the students’ mental health. In each of the models, the coordination performed by school nurses with teachers and mental health workers was critical in meeting individual student needs while also addressing mental health across the entire school population and trying to prevent additional concerns. The analysis showed that coordination across all aspects identified in the WSCC model was critical for a sustainable school health mental health model. Teams improved coordination for more effective use of resources, decreased duplication of efforts and created a stronger advocacy effort.

Addressing mental health in the schools is another opportunity to really use the WSCC model and transform school health to meet current trends. Current calls to action have focused on the need for mental health workers and community partnerships, which are important. Yet, we must not forget the role school nurses and other school health services personnel play in addressing mental health. The Future of Nursing 2030 report calls for more school and community nurses working to their full scope to coordinate efforts within their institutions as well as within the broader community, and highlights school nurses’ role in addressing mental health.

School nurses, along with school mental health workers, teachers, families and communities have seen the rising mental health concerns in youth. Many have developed sustainable, effective, evidence-based programs. These successful programs should not be overlooked. As we move forward, policies and targeted funding must leverage a coordinated approach that builds a sustainable infrastructure for school health that focuses on the whole child.

Maughan is executive director of the Center for School Health Innovation & Quality, an independent hub to advance data-driven school health through innovation, research and policy. She co-leads a global school nurse researcher consortium and is a board certified advanced public health nurse who advocates for children living in vulnerable populations.

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As the calendar flips to August, America’s schools are preparing for a new academic year, the fourth one impacted by COVID-19.

School nurses are the front lines of public health and primary care, and the Campaign is pleased to share two blogs from a global school nurse researcher and board-certified advanced public health nurse who advocates for children living in vulnerable populations. The focus is the role of school nurses in addressing health inequities and mental health.

The National Academy of Medicine’s Future of Nursing 2020-2030 report called nurses to action to address health inequities. Another focus of the report was school nursing. School nurses are on the frontlines of public health and primary care. So what is the role of school nurses in addressing health inequities?

The Center for School Health Innovation & Quality is exploring that question. The Center is a new initiative to advance the science and profession of school health, especially school nursing, in order to better serve all students, including those from underserved groups.

The Center reached out to school nurse thought leaders who, along with their own experience, identified key ways school nurses address health inequities. In addition to learning and being aware of their own implicit biases, the Center identified the following activities:

• School nurses use data to map poverty and other social factors with chronic conditions to determine further inequities and create solutions, such as coordinating for mobile clinics for dental, vision, and well-child exams to be provided at the school. An example, published by Center members, includes a school nurse supervisor who mapped her data and learned low-income students, due to their medical treatments were assigned to schools sometime an hour away from their homes. The commute time, often on public transportation, raised concern. She advocated for more equitable school placements.  School nurse should examine their data to determine if individualized care plans, 504 accommodations, and other health activities equitably represent the needs of their student population.
  • School nurses already conduct physical health screenings such as vision and hearing. Many nurses are expanding to include screening on social needs. This helps identify inequities earlier for individual families as well as look at trends of the population in order to identify more upstream solutions.
  • School nurses review and advocate for changes in school policies so as not to perpetuate health inequities. These include:
    • School lunches and lunch shaming (schools can move to universal free lunch programs)
    • Vaccine policies of “no shots no school” when there are issues of access. (School nurses often coordinate with local providers and the health department to provide school-located vaccine clinics to assure all have access to vaccinations)
    • School-to-Prison Pipeline. Researchers have found that there are inequities in suspensions and discipline occurrences that play out in school, creating a school-to-prison pipeline. A school nurse can look at their own activities to identify disparities in activities by groups in vulnerable situations, and advocate for a regular review of all infractions to identify possible inequities.
    • Period poverty. School nurses can provide and advocate for free menstruation supplies as well as make others aware of the growing problem.
    • Fees for sports or other extracurricular activities. Although improving, some schools still charge fees for students to participate in sports and various after school activities. This limits who can participate. Sports and other extracurricular activities help increase students’ chances for college.
    • Sports physicals. Many schools require physicals, which can be expensive, and some providers charge even to fill out a form. School nurses can advocate for free physicals and other options.
• School nurses see inequities and social issues and have the data to advocate for larger systemic changes such as:
  • violence in the neighborhood before, during, and after school.
  • no bussing
  • clean buses
  • improved school ventilation systems (air conditioning, appropriate heating)
  • access to WIFI (so children do not need to sit in fast food parking lots to do homework or access telehealth)
  • access to clean water
  • grassless playgrounds
  • access to fresh foods, such as partnering with farmers markets and food pantries to be right at the school
  • bullying (especially for LGBTQ+ and other students in vulnerable situations)
  • “Temporary” portable trailers (which may not have heat or running water and were meant to be temporary but are used long-term).
  • School start times. Researchers have shown that start times can help students succeed better. In one district in Washington, the change in start times decreased the number of students arriving late and first period absences in a lower income school to be comparable with those of students in a higher income school.   

Most off these ideas are more mid-stream solutions to inequities. School nurses also have an important role in addressing inequities upstream. This includes seeking out and advocating for students in underrepresented groups and letting them know about opportunities in the health professions or other career options that can help the next generation. They can help mentor students to take the classes needed to meet their career goals.

To really address root causes of inequities, school nurses must also look at school health policies themselves. Researchers have examined school policies related to inequities in resource distribution and racially biased disciplinary actions, which create a school-to-prison pipeline. Just as policies impact school-to-prison pipeline, do other policies inadvertently create a pipeline for health inequities? Policy work is a pillar of the Center and is one of the next projects it will address.

This list is just a beginning. As school nurses continue to learn more, review their data, and become integrated into school inclusion teams, they will find additional ways to impact student inequities. Addressing inequities early will allow more time for students to reach their full potential.  Learn more about the Center for School Health Innovation & Quality.

Maughan is executive director of the Center for School Health Innovation & Quality, an independent hub to advance data-driven school health through innovation, research and policy. She co-leads a global school nurse researcher consortium and is a board certified advanced public health nurse who advocates for children living in vulnerable populations.

The post Role School Health Addressing Health Inequities appeared first on Campaign for Action.

The weeks before and after Thanksgiving are usually filled with grace and gratefulness. And so it is even this year, a year of highs and lows. Through it all, you, our great network of allies and friends, have shown remarkable strength. Today, we write simply to say thanks. Thank you for putting your lives on the line, and thank you, too, for taking steps to create a powerful future.

You—all of you reading this—are helping the Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action reach our ultimate goal of a more equitable America, one in which more people have more choices for better health. For your dedication, we are grateful.

We thank for the ways you are making the Future of Nursing 2020-2030 report your own. You were inspired and inspiring at our two Campaign summits, in June and September: In all, nearly 100 organizations have taken a stand to achieve health equity, committing to implement at least one recommendation from the National Academy of Medicine’s long-awaited report. You are taking purposeful steps to diversify the nursing workforce, address systemic racism, support nurse well-being, and more.

We thank all of you who participated in our Health Equity Action Forum series, and our mentoring programs supporting nursing schools that serve populations underrepresented in our profession.

And we’re glad, too, for ongoing progress that represents a significant victory for the public: With Delaware just months ago lifting restrictions on nurses, some 83 million people in 24 states and the District of Columbia now have direct access to nurse practitioners who can provide full care.

We are thrilled that, despite the pandemic’s pressures, many of you chose to focus on the critical work needed to create structures to make health care more equitable in every way, by applying for our Nursing Innovations Fund awards. We look forward to watching the progress of the six coalitions that earned funds, along with our many past-year awardees.

You are part of a huge group of good-hearted, hard-working people fighting to bring better health to this country. There is greatness in numbers, and your strength and determination are sources of joy and great hope. Thank you for many hundreds of reasons to give thanks!

Susan B. Hassmiller, PhD, RN, FAAN
Senior Adviser for Nursing, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation;
Director, Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action

Susan C. Reinhard, PhD, RN, FAAN
Senior Vice President and Director, AARP Public Policy Institute;
Chief Strategist, Center to Champion Nursing in America and Family Caregiving Initiatives

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Nurses deliver high-quality, accessible, and equitable care for all Americans. Many health care experts and advocates lament that the current health care system under-develops, under-utilizes, and under-appreciates nurses.

The American Nurses Foundation is committed to changing these dynamics and asks nurses to respond to its request for proposals for bold, innovative, and risky (but not reckless) ideas that will ensure that nurses have access to the knowledge and tools to deliver exemplary care, and the environments in which they can do that important work.

Over the next three years the Foundation will grant a total of $15 million to pilot 11 of these ideas through its Reimagining Nursing (RN) Initiative. The Foundation seeks nurses, academicians, informaticists, computer scientists, developers, and organizations that heighten visibility of the value of nursing and improve health care delivery systems. Applications are due Oct. 25, 2021.

Leaders in nursing, healthcare delivery, regulation, academia, and technology designed the RN Initiative to unleash the potential of a diverse, dynamic nursing workforce to propel society into a healthier future by accelerating change in the following areas:

Education

Pilots will challenge the current educational model to be more competency-focused, maximize the clinical practicum experiences of the student, and expand students’ experiences outside of acute care so nurses can be successful from the start in a wide range of practice settings. Innovations will ensure that new nurse graduates immediately contribute to and succeed in a continuously transforming health delivery system.

Technology

Pilots will bring together nurses and technology developers to design and implement technology-based tactics and tools to improve nursing practice. Solutions designed by nurses and for nurses will lead to better tools and higher adoption rates of tools that improve nursing efficiency and patient outcomes and increase access to care.

Direct Reimbursement

Pilots will establish community-based models of care coordination and delivery funded by direct reimbursement for nursing services with clear accounting of nursing impact on outcomes, resulting in greater access, improved outcomes, and clinician engagement. Fundamentally, care delivery in the community by nurses will improve the health of the community through greater accessibility, reduction in inequities, lowering costs, and maintaining or improving the quality of outcomes.

Over the three years of the grants, these 11 pilots will prove that change is possible and pave the way for revolutionary transformation. However, the Foundation does not plan to stop there. The ultimate hope is that these bold ideas can be brought to scale to become common practices. This will require the entire health care field to engage with this work to build momentum for change, inspiring others to test their own ideas and/or replicate the RN Initiative pilots.

By supporting nurse innovators and leaders to transform their profession, the RN Initiative can revolutionize how nurses help meet the needs of vulnerable populations, incorporate the social determinants of health, and speed the pace of health care transformation.

For more information on the Reimagining Nursing Initiative and how to apply for a grant, please visit the website or contact Foundation staff at rni@ana.org.

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Cover of the Color of Wellness Magazine July 2021 issue 7.

In the midst of a pandemic that was killing Black people at more than twice the rate of their white counterparts, Michelle Greene Rhodes (MHS, RN, CMCN) found herself wondering what she could do.

Rhodes saw her fellow nurses doing everything from contact tracing to intubations, but her skill set was a little different. Following a career as a specialist in managed care, Rhodes had built a practice helping her fellow nurses become speakers, authors, and entrepreneurs. Now she saw an opportunity to use the network she had built to address the inequities revealed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

But the outcome of her efforts wasn’t a community clinic or a scientific paper. Instead, it was a glossy magazine: The Color of Wellness, a magazine led by Black nurses that focuses on the health needs of the Black community.

“When I saw my colleagues out there on the frontlines, I went through a period of guilt when I first starting seeing the pictures and stories of horror,” Rhodes said. “My nursing background was in managed care. The common theme is looking at data, looking at prices, looking at health care costs. I believe the Lord turned on a light for me and said, use that.”

Rhodes imagined a magazine organized around the audiences and themes that lead to the most entrenched health problems for the Black population. She decided to recruit a nurse for each theme, seeking out leaders using resources she had developed over her career (such as a Facebook group for nurses interested in entrepreneurship).

“I was thinking about what would make the biggest impact when we released this to communities,” she said. “We needed someone to think about teens, someone to think about women, someone to think about men, someone to think about the military, and so on.”

Since January, Rhodes and her team have produced seven issues of The Color of Wellness. Topics addressed include everything from mental illness and work-life balance to tips on sunscreen and vacation planning.

The common theme is encouraging wellness behaviors that can prevent some of the most persistent chronic health issues Rhodes saw in her managed care career. But she is also considering how to more explicitly address health equity in future issues.

Michelle Greene Rhodes, MHS, RN, CMCN

“I believe we provide a solution to health inequity because we can relay the right messages but still remain relatable to the communities that we serve,” Rhodes said.

Health equity is also central to Rhodes’s expansion plans for the magazine and related efforts. She envisions the same team of nurses that designed the magazine’s core content delivering workshops on the same themes in vulnerable communities. She also hopes to work with health systems who could use the magazine as a way to connect with patients and other stakeholders.

“I don’t just want to get this into the hands of diversity and equity officers,” she said. “I’m hoping that The Color of Wellness can help bring institutions closer to the vulnerable communities that they serve.”

Like Rhodes, many nurses are now considering how they can better address health equity through a new phase in their careers. As the latest National Academy of Medicine report on the future of nursing argues, it’s an essential problem for the next decade and beyond.

It’s also a problem Rhodes has pondered in her role as an entrepreneurial coach to nurses. No matter the individual circumstances, she argues, finding the right path requires nurses to do some soul-searching about their core purpose or motivation.

In her case, she says, that motivation comes from the story of her mother, a certified nursing assistant.

“She wasn’t able to fully live out her dreams, so I want to help as many nurses as I can to realize their dreams, and particularly Black nurses,” Rhodes said. “I have been that nurse that didn’t have a voice. There are times when I have been overlooked. We play such a big role in nursing, but a lot of times you don’t see the Black nurse represented.”

Rhodes said she sees her efforts to support Black nurses as part of a broader effort to connect the rising generation of nurses with emerging opportunities. This could require a “paradigm shift” in the way the profession thinks about leadership opportunities, she said.

“How do we refocus nursing on where nurses are now?” she asked. “How do we connect with a generation of nurses who are different from before and help them move into leadership?”

The answers may not be easy, but Rhodes said that based on her coaching experience there is at least one factor every nurse can control: clearly communicating career goals.

“Communicate with your leaders that you want to learn more or move higher,” she said. “Then move forward with all your might.”

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