Media Contacts:
Ilse Zuniga, AARP Communications, izuniga@aarp.org
Kristie Aylett, AACN Communications, kristie.aylett@aacn.org

AARP continues its collaboration with the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses to support initiatives to strengthen the nursing workforce with grants from the 2025 Nursing Innovations Fund

ALISO VIEJO, Calif. – Feb. 20, 2025 – Proposals are being accepted for grants from the 2025 Nursing Innovations Fund, a continuing collaboration between the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN Critical Care) and AARP to strengthen the nursing workforce.

This program seeks innovative and replicable solutions to create and sustain healthy work environments and improve recruitment and retention rates of registered nurses, through implementation of one or more AACN Critical Care’s Standards for Establishing and Sustaining Healthy Work Environments.   

“Nurses play a critical role in protecting the health of our nation, but they cannot effectively deliver care without healthy work environments. AARP is proud to provide ongoing support to ensure a strong nursing workforce across all care settings where nurses practice,” said Megan O’Reilly, AARP Vice President of Government Affairs for Health and Family.

“Stressful working conditions and unhealthy work environments are key reasons nurses are leaving their profession at alarming rates. Research has shown that nurses who work where healthy work environments are actively created report higher job satisfaction, better quality of care, more shifts with appropriate staffing, and less intent to leave their current positions,” said AACN Chief Clinical Officer Vicki Good.

Projects will use AACN’s Healthy Work Environment Assessment Tool as a pre- and post-measure. The free online tool helps teams assess and measure progress in establishing and sustaining a healthy work environment. Awardees will submit a final report on the impact of the project as part of the grant’s emphasis on sustainability and sharing best practices.

Proposals are due by April 4, 2025, with finalists notified in May and funded projects to commence July 1. Awards of up to $20,000 will be given for projects completed in one year.  AARP will administer the grants.

For complete information about the awards, eligibility criteria, application and other details, visit /2025-innovations-fund/.

AARP is the nation’s largest nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to empowering Americans 50 and older to choose how they live as they age. With a nationwide presence, AARP strengthens communities and advocates for what matters most to the more than 100 million Americans 50-plus and their families: health and financial security, and personal fulfillment.

To learn more, visit www.aarp.org/about-aarp or follow @AARP,
@AARPenEspañol, and @AARPadvocates on social media.  

American Association of Critical-Care Nurses is the world’s largest specialty nursing organization, with more than 135,000 members and nearly 200 chapters in the United States. To achieve its vision of a healthcare system driven by the needs of patients and families, where nurses make their optimal contribution, AACN’s advocacy priority is to establish and sustain healthy work environments that support nursing excellence.

American Association of Critical-Care Nurses, 27071 Aliso Creek Road, Aliso Viejo, CA 92656; 949-362-2000; www.aacn.org; facebook.com/aacnface; x.com/aacnme

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Contact: Mary Boyle, mboyle@aarp.org

AARP, the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN Critical Care), and the Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action, an initiative of AARP Foundation, AARP, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, have awarded nearly $275,000 to 12 projects offering promising solutions to strengthen and diversify the nursing workforce through innovative nurse recruitment and retention strategies that establish and sustain healthy, equitable work environments.

Strengthening the workforce and sustaining healthy, equitable work environments are key to addressing a shortage that has already resulted in the loss of 100,000 registered nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic due to stress, burnout, and retirement. Another 600,000 nurses have reported intent to leave the workforce by 2027 – and the public is concerned.

A recent AARP Research Center survey showed that nearly all adults (98%) say that nurses are vital to the health and well-being of the nation and the vast majority (84%) recognize that the nursing shortage is critical and could negatively impact our population’s health. The same survey showed that 95% of adults believe more should be done to retain nurses and 96% say more should be done to recognize the value of nurses.

This award recognizes that if health equity is to be realized, and if people are going to live their healthiest lives, ongoing support is required to ensure a strong nursing workforce and healthy, equitable work environments across all care settings where nurses practice.

“The number of stressors on nurses keeps multiplying, and many of them have to do with the workplace itself,” said Susan C. Reinhard, PhD, RN, FAAN, chief strategist emeritus, Center to Champion Nursing in America, which runs the Campaign for Action. “Nurses are leaving the profession at alarming, unsustainable rates. These 12 projects are aimed at reversing this trend. We are optimistic they will lead to replicable strategies for healthier work environments and workforce recruitment and retention strategies.”

Antonia M. Villarruel, PhD, RN, FAAN, professor, and the Margaret Bond Simon Dean of Nursing University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, who chairs the Campaign’s Strategic Advisory Committee, said the following about the significance of the awards:

“Nurses are witnesses to or recipients of racism and discrimination in health care settings. Yet, nurses are in the best position to leverage their commitment, expertise, and leadership to address these issues for patients, families, and co-workers. Healthy, empowering, and safe work environments are critical to supporting nurses’ efforts to achieve health equity. Each of these projects holds promise for doing just that.”

Vicki Good, DNP, RN, CENP, CPPS, chief clinical officer for AACN Critical Care, said, “As the largest segment of the health care workforce, nurses are uniquely positioned to not only navigate today’s challenges, but to shape the future of health care. Healthy work environments are crucial to those efforts, with far-reaching benefits for patients, families, and communities.”

The funded projects are from California, the District of Columbia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, and Washington.

Read more about the projects and recipients.

The AARP Center for Health Equity through Nursing^SM administers the award program.

AARP is the nation’s largest nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to empowering Americans 50 and older to choose how they live as they age. With a nationwide presence, AARP strengthens communities and advocates for what matters most to the more than 100 million Americans 50-plus and their families: health security, financial stability, and personal fulfillment.

American Association of Critical-Care Nurses is the world’s largest specialty nursing organization, with over 130,000 members and nearly 200 chapters in the United States. To achieve its vision of a health care system driven by the needs of patients and families, where nurses make their optimal contribution, AACN advocacy priority is to establish and sustain healthy work environments that support nursing excellence.

The Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action is an initiative of AARP Foundation, AARP, and RWJF. Through its state Action Coalitions, the Campaign works with policymakers, health care professionals, educators, and business leaders to respond to the country’s increasing demand for safe, high-quality, and effective health care. The Campaign’s vision is that everyone in America can live a healthier life, advanced by equity-minded nurses as essential and valued partners in providing care and promoting health equity and well-being.

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In 2023, the Mississippi Action Coalition and the Nurses on Boards Coalition conducted an inaugural survey to demonstrate the value of nurses serving on governing boards. Developed with a 2022 Health Equity Innovations Fund Award, this survey was the first comprehensive tool to measure the value of nurses on boards, commissions and appointments, and specifically, the impact of nurse trustees on addressing the social determinates of health and leading change on issues of structural racism.

Results of that survey will be released June 5 as part of a webinar/virtual discussion that will examine three key implications of the research findings and identify how nurses serving on governing boards are impacting the social determinants of health.

The presenters are:

• Kimberly Ann Cleveland, PhD, JD, MSN, RN, C-MBC, C-MPC; Board Chair Emeritus, Nurses on Boards Coalition; Associate Professor Kent State University
• Pam Rudisill, DNP, MSN, RN, NEC-BC, FAONL, FAAN; Board Chair Emeritus, Nurses on Boards Coalition; Senior Vice President and Chief Nursing Officer; Community Health System

The webinar will be held June 5, from 4-5 p.m. ET.

It is hosted by the American Association of Nurse Attorneys. There is no registration fee, but registration is required.

This event is approved for Nursing CE with the California Board of Nursing for live or on-demand participation. (This event is not eligible for CLE.)

https://taana.org/event-5702874

The 2022 Health Equity Innovations Fund was sponsored by the AARP Center for Health Equity through Nursing^(SM) and the Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action, an initiative of AARP Foundation, AARP and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

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AARP and the Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action, an initiative of AARP Foundation, AARP and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, proudly support the Summer Health Institute for Nurse Exploration and Success or SHINES program. SHINES is helping create a stable and diverse health care workforce to care for our nation’s 100 million older adults and their families. The two-week immersive summer camp at the University of California Davis Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing exposes teens and young adults to careers in nursing and allied health professions. Participants are equipped with health care career knowledge and training including CPR certification, mentorship, professional skill building, and career and college navigation skills. They also receive stipends and are incentivized to gain certification and immediate employment in critically needed health workforce positions.

A local CBS news station recently highlighted the program. To learn more about SHINES and other AARP and Campaign for Action Health Equity Innovation Fund projects, read more on our website.

Photo credit: (c) GETTY IMAGES/boonchai wedmakawand

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Now we are ready for you to Join Us in an environment of innovative thinking and approaches – town hall meetings – to identify gaps and barriers, thus leading to development and dissemination of educational programming/tools based upon identified needs and approaches to help Action Coalition members prepare and pursue board opportunities and track our results.

We invite your active engagement! The first 20 Action Coalitions to contact us at  nobc@nursesonboardscoalition.org will not only receive next steps i.e., date/time of kick-off meeting, your role, your participation (approximately eight hours), but also a $1,000 stipend for each participating Action Coalition, at the conclusion of the commitment. JOIN US to be a part of raising the tide of nurse trustees pursuing health equity through collaboration and community-based approaches.

Thank you for your consideration.  We eagerly await your response.

The post <strong>Join NOBC to Participate in an Innovation Project to Increase Health Equity!</strong> appeared first on Campaign for Action.

The Future of Nursing West Virginia Action Coalition held the grand opening of the Aila Accad Center for Nurse Entrepreneurship Saturday, September 24, ahead of the West Virginia 2022 Gala Fundraiser and Awards Ceremony. The Center, named for the late Aila Accad, MSN, RN who served as executive director at Future of Nursing West Virginia, was established earlier this year to support nurses interested in opening health-related businesses.

In 2021, the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC), which works for sustainable community and economic development, announced it would award the Future of Nursing West Virginia coalition $630,000 to establish the West Virginia Center for Nurse Entrepreneurship. The Entrepreneur Project, which was the precursor to the Center, grew out of the 2018 Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action Nursing Innovations Fund.

Below are some photos from the grand opening, courtesy of Susan Hassmiller, PhD, RN, FAAN, former director of the Campaign.

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Nurses have been working with public schools to serve children for generations. In Massachusetts, nurses and school leaders used funding from the Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action to improve the well-being of students, especially those living in communities with low health rankings. The Campaign is an initiative of AARP Foundation, AARP and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Since 2010, Massachusetts has required every public school to have a wellness committee that addresses topics of nutrition, physical activity, and any other issue that might affect student well-being. The Campaign’s Massachusetts Action Coalition leveraged its first Nursing Innovations Fund award to increase nurse leadership on these school wellness committees, focusing on communities that received low rankings in the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute’s County Health Rankings and Roadmaps project.

“This project aligned with a national movement to seek new leadership roles for nurses,” said Patricia Crombie, MSN, RN, project director with the Massachusetts Action Coalition. That movement included the Nurses on Boards Coalition filling more than 10,000 board seats or decision-making bodies with nurses whose strategic influence will improve the health of communities, plus additional focus by the Campaign and others to elevate nurse leaders.

“There has been a focus for several years among nurses developing leadership roles beyond the usual medical spaces,” Crombie said. “We were also developing relationships with many school nurses and public health nurses, so it all kind of came together when we saw an opportunity from the Campaign to help nurses pursue those leadership roles.”

Crucial to the success of the project was a partnership with the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents. This group was represented on the team by Joseph Baeta, Ed.D, superintendent of Norton Public Schools and Paul Vieira, Ed.D, superintendent of Douglas Public Schools.

Baeta said it had always bothered him that health was treated as an afterthought in school curricula. He explained that his district has taken the unusual step of instituting a year-long health class in freshman year conveying the message that it is as fundamental a subject as English or math.

Vieira agreed that the past few years have showed the state just how much nurses can do for schools. “They’re doing more than just Band-Aids and checking blood sugar,” he said. “They’re in classrooms. They’re educating staff. They’re developing curricula. They’re in planning meetings with teachers. They’re doing so many things behind the scenes to strengthen the school.”

The Massachusetts Action Coalition used its second Nursing Innovations Fund award one year later to focus on developing interventions to help school wellness committees address vaping, a top concern for school administrators.

The Action Coalition collaborated with partner organizations and school wellness committees to create a structure and process for vaping curriculum development. Its members then worked with representatives from partner organizations to create evidence-based, adaptive and developmentally appropriate curriculum based on existing state and national resources. The outcome was an Anti-Vaping Curriculum Resource Guide, which was evaluated and disseminated to school systems throughout the state.

Though the focus on the issue lessened somewhat because of the pandemic, Baeta said he anticipates that school administrators will have a much greater need for the curricula as they see their students are no less addicted than they were before COVID-19 lockdowns.

“It’s back full throttle,” he said.

In The Future of Nursing 2020-2030: Charting a Path to Achieve Health Equity, the National Academy of Medicine highlighted schools as essential sites for addressing social determinants of health. The Massachusetts project shows that with the right partnerships in place, nurses and school leaders can effectively meet the diverse needs of schools throughout the state.

Forming those kinds of partnerships takes curiosity and humility, according to Maureen Sroczynski, DNP, RN, who served on the Norton Public Schools wellness committee with Baeta.

“Instead of going in and telling people what they should do, it’s more reaching out to the community and saying, how can we help you? How can we support what you are already doing?” she said.

Baeta believes that by boosting the visibility of school nurses, this program is deepening the community’s respect for their expertise and for the many different ways they can contribute to the well-being of students. To learn more about the Massachusetts Action Coalition’s project, visit the Nursing Innovations Fund webpage.

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The school district developed a video about the program, watch it below.

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What kind of initiative brings together a beef council, a local theater group, and a state’s largest university? A Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action-supported program where nurses take on the problem of suicide in innovative ways. The Campaign is an initiative of AARP Foundation, AARP and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The Kentucky Action Coalition’s “Kentucky Partners to the BARN (Bringing Awareness Right Now)” initiative first received funding from the Campaign’s Nursing Innovations Fund in 2020. In its initial phase, the project focused on the epidemic of farmer suicide. Action Coalitions are the Campaign’s state-based coalitions.

As the program’s leaders explained in an essay, while anyone can experience mental health issues, including suicidal thoughts, certain professions are more vulnerable because of several additional factors.

“Farmers are more susceptible to suicide because of unique stressors and suicide exposures associated with agriculture production, which include social isolation, relationship problems, and unpredictable forces such as crop and livestock loss, machinery breakdown, and commodity market fluctuations,” the team wrote.

The BARN program addresses these problems through the “Farmer Dinner Theater” approach first developed by Deborah Reed, PhD, RN, FAAN. Through dramatic presentations featuring actors as well as the farmers themselves, these gatherings help farm families discuss health issues facing their communities.

In the Action Coalition’s version of the program, more than 30 students who had an interest in agricultural careers were recruited through local 4-H clubs. They were then trained in suicide prevention skills as well as theater skills in order to produce the skits for the dinner theater.

In the end, 255 people attended the dinners, far exceeding organizers’ initial estimate of 100 attendees. Participants are exposed to a variety of proven mental health interventions, from breathing techniques to basic suicide intervention resources. But all the information is grounded in re-enactments of real situations that farm families may have faced.

“It is real, it is raw, it is powerful,” said Janie Heath, PhD, APRN, FAAN, dean of the University of Kentucky’s College of Nursing and one of the program’s organizers. “I have never seen a more engaged group of people in my life.”

Reflecting on the development of the program, Heath credits advice from the Campaign that prompted her and her colleagues to better engage with the community and its needs. That idea put them on the path to partnerships with groups like 4-H, the Kentucky Beef Council, and the Actors Theater of Louisville. The University of Kentucky College of Agriculture, Food & Environment and the Kentucky Future Farmers of America Association are also partners in this effort.

“Some of the best advice we received from the Campaign was to reach out to non-nurses to help us think about our strategy and next steps,” she said.

This evolution in thinking was part of a larger turn toward health equity in nursing, said Julie Marfell, DNP, APRN, a University of Kentucky professor and another leader of the project.

Since receiving their first innovation award in 2020, the Kentucky Action Coalition has greatly expanded its impact. Another innovation award in 2021 helped the group expand the BARN program to address the issues of mental health and suicide among young people, recruiting 100 school nurses to participate.

The same training and tools will also be used to address nurses’ well-being, an urgent priority identified by National Academy of Medicine’s The Future of Nursing 2020-2030: Charting a Path to Achieve Health Equity.

“It’s all about getting nurses involved in this work and trained in this work, and it all goes back to that first funding from the Campaign,” Heath said.

But the increase in impact goes beyond any one program. Heath said the new strategies and connections developed over the past few years have helped Kentucky’s nurses become more influential on policy matters. For example, the state recently moved to require continuing education in suicide prevention for nurses.

“We’re working with state government. We’re working with city councils. We’ve got street cred now and everyone understands that we’re not going away,” she said.

The Kentucky Action Coalition also has big plans to share what they have learned with other states. Working with the University of Kentucky College of Agriculture, Food and Environment, the College of Nursing is developing a toolkit to reproduce their successes with funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The toolkit will include a planning guide, curricula, facilitators’ guide, and “train the trainer” lessons. Organizers plan to share the toolkit throughout the southern region of the United States.

To learn more about how you can implement programs like the one in Kentucky, visit the Nursing Innovations Fund page on the project.

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In principle, a novel pathogen like COVID-19 should affect everyone equally. But very early in the pandemic, it became clear that this was not the case. Once the disease was established in the United States, Black and Native American communities were hit especially hard and continue to suffer disproportionate harm today.

As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and others have explained, these divergent outcomes are due to social determinants of health, or SDOH; understanding these factors is an essential part of responding to public health crises. That’s one reason why disaster preparedness was a significant focus of the National Academy of Medicine’s report The Future of Nursing 2020-2030: Charting a Path to Achieve Health Equity. The report calls on nurses to understand how addressing social determinants can make communities more resilient in the face of disaster.

But the Wisconsin Center for Nursing had already undertaken that work a year before the report was released, with support from the Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action’s Nursing Innovations Fund. The Campaign is an initiative of AARP Foundation, AARP and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation that is building a healthier America through nursing.

“We just got there early,” said Barbara Nichols, MS, RN, FAAN, executive director of the Wisconsin Center for Nursing.

Nichols and her team developed “Nurses Respond Now,” a training course meant to prepare working nurses to understand the needs of vulnerable populations during public health disasters.

The course had its origins in a survey of the needs of Wisconsin RNs and LPNs. These nurses told the Wisconsin Center for Nursing that their employers did a good job educating them in the basics of disaster preparedness. But they felt less competent when it came to the more general topic of public health crises and how they intersect with health equity.

“What I’m pleased by is that we developed the course based on data about what nurses said they did and didn’t have,” Nichols said.

The project was initially piloted with 37 nurses caring for vulnerable populations in Milwaukee, then developed into a continuing education course available to nurses throughout the state. Partners in sharing the curriculum included the Rural Wisconsin Health Cooperative, the Wisconsin Primary Health Care Association, and the Bellin School of Nursing in Green Bay.

Nichols says the team is also looking at additional approaches to getting the word out, including the development of a “masterclass” for nursing school faculty.

The course addresses two central themes: the need to identify vulnerable populations in public health crises and the specific role nurses can play in serving them.

“The nurse has a specific role in responding to public health emergencies, and if nurses are prepared, the hospitals and communities they are a part of will do a better job,” she said. “The course helps you connect those dots. It makes you a better practitioner.”

Some of the “dots” connected by the course were identified by program exit surveys. More than 90 percent of nurse participants said that after the course they could explain the specific impacts of COVID-19 on vulnerable communities, use social determinants of health as a framework to analyze their needs, and provide care in spite of their own unconscious biases.

The course also served as a platform to discuss systems-level changes that nurses desire in their communities. Many participants said that they wanted to see their organizations develop specialized teams devoted to addressing the social determinants of health, or new resources frontline nurses can access.

More generally, Nichols said she saw the course as a way for Wisconsin’s nurses to become more comfortable discussing the topic of race. More than 85 percent of the state’s population is white; more than 90 percent of the nurses are as well, she said.

“You could live in Madison and never come into contact with a Black person, even though there are 10,000 of us,” she said.

For other organizations looking to make a similar impact on health equity issues, Nichols’ advice is simple: start with data. By asking the state’s nurses what they needed, the Center was able to make more effective use of its funds.

“You don’t necessarily need a lot of money to be impactful if you are focused,” she said.

Read more about the Campaign’s Nursing Innovations Fund and Wisconsin’s program.

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