The objectives of the American Indian Alaska Native Mentoring Curriculum are:

• Provide an overview of AI/AN historical, social, and political context and its influence on higher education experiences
• Provide guidance on culturally sensitive and responsive mentoring approaches, and teaching and learning strategies for faculty
• Provide guidance on strategies to support AI/AN student retention and academic success
• Provide information and resources on approaches for recruitment of AI/AN students

The post AI/AN Mentoring Curriculum for Nursing Faculty appeared first on Campaign for Action.

Created by the Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action, the toolkit is based on the nursing process—the five steps known as ADPIE:

Assessment

Diagnosis

Planning

Implementation

Evaluation

This ADPIE framework lets health professionals assess how ready they are to take action to improve health equity locally, as well as measure their community’s needs.

Each section of the toolkit stands on its own, which means it’s user-friendly—nurses,  as well as Action Coalitions and their partners, can pick and choose elements that are appropriate for the level of engagement, experience, and the specific needs of their community.

If you have questions about the toolkit, please contact Jazmine Cooper, at jncooper@aarp.org.

The post Equity Toolkit Helps Communities Take On Social Determinants of Health appeared first on Campaign for Action.

Developed in 2011, the Campaign for Action Dashboard is a series of graphs and charts the Campaign uses to evaluate its efforts to implement the recommendations in the Institute of Medicine’s The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health report. It contains seven primary indicators: education, doctoral degrees, state practice environment, interprofessional collaboration, leadership, workforce data, and diversity, and can be viewed by clicking the “download” button below. It was updated twice per year and was last updated in September 2021.

Data Sources

Download

Dashboard Secondary Indicators

Below are links to secondary indicator graphics that provide further support for each goal represented within the Dashboard. Data collected was for years 2010-2019.

Indicator 1: Education—Increase the proportion of nurses with a baccalaureate degree to 80 percent by 2020
Number and percent of U.S.-educated, first-time NCLEX-takers with BSN
Number of RN‐to‐BSN graduates annually
Number of hospitals in the United States with Magnet status

Indicator 2: Doctoral Degrees—Double the number of nurses with a doctorate by 2020
Total fall enrollment in nursing doctorate programs
Number of people receiving nursing doctoral degrees annually

Indicator 3: State Practice Environment—Advanced practice registered nurses should be able to practice to the full extent of their education and training
State practice environment for nurse practitioners
State practice environment for certified nurse midwives
NCSBN’s APRN Consensus Model implementation status
Number of nurse-led clinics in the United States
Number of nurse-led clinics located in medically underserved areas (MUA)

Indicator 4: Interprofessional Collaboration—Expand opportunities for nurses to lead and disseminate collaborative improvement efforts
Number of articles published in top 10 health services research journals co-authored by an RN and authors from other disciplines

Indicator 5: Leadership—Health care decision-makers should ensure leadership positions are available to and filled by nurses
Percent of hospital boards with RN members

Indicator 6: Workforce Data—Build infrastructure for collection and analysis of interprofessional health care workforce data
State boards of nursing that participate in the NCSBN Nursys Data System

Indicator 7: Diversity—Make diversity in the nursing workforce a priority
Racial/ethnic composition of the RN workforce in the United States
New RN graduates by degree type, by gender
New RN graduates by degree type, by race/ethnicity
Number of Action Coalitions with members of its’ state’s ethnic or racial minority nursing organization or of its’ men in nursing state chapter as a voting member on its most senior executive-level policy-making body
Diversity of nursing doctorate graduates by race/ethnicity
Diversity of nursing doctorate graduates by gender
States that collect race/ethnicity data about their nursing workforce (by year)
Racial and ethnic composition of RN graduates of pre-licensure nursing education programs and the general population by state – upon request

The post Archived: Dashboard Indicators appeared first on Campaign for Action.

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted everyone’s lives in different ways. But in Wyoming, one Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action state-based coalition has figured out how to use those disruptions as an opportunity for innovation, community building and managing health.

As the pandemic hit in 2020, nursing homes in the state and across the nation adopted strict visitor policies to limit the spread of the disease. This exacerbated social isolation — already a serious problem for America’s seniors. And, it also made it impossible for nursing students to complete clinical rotations at those nursing homes.

Jeanine Niemoller, RN, MS, director of the Wyoming Center for Nursing, came up with a solution.

Using funds from a Campaign for Action Nursing Innovations Fund award, Niemoller found a way to provide clinical experience for nursing students while also helping older Americans use technology. The Wyoming center had been ready to execute a plan for nursing students to teach older Wyomingites technology skills so they could access telehealth services from their residences. When COVID-19 made it impossible to visit people in their homes, the center instead partnered with the state’s AARP office to help nursing students provide the same services in a community setting. (The Campaign is an initiative of AARP Foundation, AARP, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.)

What they found surprised them. The 47 program participants initially did not want to use technology for accessing telehealth services. Instead, they wanted help connecting to a broader array of services like buying groceries or connecting with distant family members. The need addressed was community, not just access to health care.

Niemoller explains that this more open-ended version of the program still provided essential education to the 43 students who took part from the University of Wyoming’s Fay W. Whitney School of Nursing.

“If you can teach an older person to use a cell phone, you can teach them how to manage diabetes or heart disease,” Niemoller said. “You come to see that they don’t learn in the same way young children do.”

By providing support in using computers and mobile devices, the nurse educator said, students learn about many different aspects of providing care to older adults in a community setting. The nursing students learned to set up a safe, quarantined area at Laramie’s Eppson Center for Seniors, where the services were provided. They also learned to assess participants’ fine motor skills, hearing, and vision as part of the process. This included practical details the students might not learn from textbooks, such as the fact that some seniors’ fingerprints are too weak to use for identification on a smart phone.

The most important skill the students learned, though, was the ability to build trust with community members.

“These are members of the most trusted profession teaching older adults about something they mistrusted: The Internet,” Niemoller said.

This one-on-one interaction in a community setting helps fight social isolation, she said.

“I have spent my entire career working with older adults, and one of the things I know is that they need a reason to get up in the morning,” Niemoller said. “The pandemic took away a lot of that connectivity for people. They might not eat as well, they might not get out and exercise, they might not see family and friends, and that can make people discouraged and depressed. So even though everyone was wearing masks and couldn’t touch each other, they knew that the people around them were going through something similar, and I think that was just as valuable as what they learned.”

Even seemingly ordinary services can help people overcome a sense of isolation, Niemoller observed. She cited an example of a program participant who was born in France and used Google Maps to revisit the streets of her native village half a world away.

“She could get on Street View and go up and down the streets of her hometown,” she said. “She said, ‘I will never get to go home, but today I got to go home.’”

Learning to create relationships that make that kind of difference, she said, will be essential to provide the kind of care in community settings envisioned by the National Academy of Medicine’s report The Future of Nursing 2020-2030: Charting a Path to Achieve Health Equity. For this reason, Niemoller is now looking at how the program could be replicated across the state.

The program connecting seniors and nurses also drew on the support of the AARP Wyoming state office, which had previously established a similar program connecting its members ages 50+ and high school students. In addition to providing matching funds, AARP Wyoming asked the state’s Internet service providers to consider low-cost Internet options for eligible older adults to access more affordable connectivity.

Thomas Lacock, AARP Wyoming’s associate state director for communications and state advocacy, said that connecting seniors with high-speed Internet service has been an increasingly important priority for the organization. But the connection itself is just part of the equation. Older people may also need support to overcome distrust of new technology, he said. That’s an area where nurses can make an essential difference.

“Anytime someone says they are a nurse, it sends a message to folks that they have devoted their entire life to serve,” Lacock said. “That offers instant trust and credibility.”

Get Involved

To learn more about the Wyoming State Action Coalition and this program, please contact Jeanine Neimoller at jeanine.niemoller@outlook.com.

To connect with AARP Wyoming about volunteer opportunities, contact Jennifer Baier, associate state director of community outreach at jbaier@aarp.org.

Interested in other AARP volunteer opportunities? Visit the AARP volunteer portal and be connected with opportunities in your area. An AARP log-in is required and free to non-members.

The post Wyoming, Pandemic Innovating to Build Community appeared first on Campaign for Action.

An article in American Nurse Journal challenges nurses to take an active role in combatting health misinformation. Misinformation is “false, inaccurate, or misleading information” and it has proliferated at alarming rates during the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in what the World Health Organization calls an “infodemic.”

The article, co-authored by Antonia M. Villarruel, PhD, RN, FAAN, Professor and Margaret Bond Simon Dean of Nursing at Penn Nursing, argues that “nurses have an important role in helping patients, families, and communities access credible, trusted health information.” And further, that “nurses should consider the foundational attributes of information sources when engaging on social media platforms where professional, social, and familial identities may converge.” (The article has a lot to say about social media platforms’ responsibility for this problem.)

Villarruel, who is also a co-chair of the Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action’s Strategic Advisory Committee, says, “nurses and consumers must develop skills to evaluate information critically.” The article takes a deep dive on proven methods for assessing the quality and reliability of information, including one called the CRAAP or CRAP test, which “encourages users to walk through brief pathways to identify key areas of online source credibility.” The key areas forming the apt acronym are Currency, Relevance, Authority/Accuracy and Purpose.  The Campaign for Action is an initiative of AARP Foundation, AARP and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The article notes that the U.S. Surgeon General has asked all Americans to help slow the creation and spread of health misinformation because it is harming both individual and public health. As Villarruel explains it, “prevention is better than cure. Treating people for the harms of the infodemic is both difficult and uncertain, but nurses have access to a wealth of tools, principles, and approaches for ensuring that patients and communities receive evidence-based, up-to-date, and credible health information.”

Read the article

Read more about Villarruel

The post Nurses Can Help Defeat Misinformation appeared first on Campaign for Action.

The Maryland Action Coalition created a survey to assess state stakeholders’ interest in and prioritization of the nine recommendations. Feel free to download and use the survey as a starting point for you to survey your state stakeholders.

The post Setting Future of Nursing 2030 Priorities and Interests appeared first on Campaign for Action.

The Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action, an initiative of AARP Foundation, AARP, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), has announced that six nurse-led projects will receive Nursing Innovations Fund awards of up to $25,000 each. The projects submitted by the Campaign’s state-based coalitions all serve to strengthen nursing’s role in building a Culture of Health and promoting health equity by addressing societal barriers to health and well-being, including structural racism. The projects are described below.

The winning projects are from Delaware, Kentucky, Montana, Pennsylvania, Utah and West Virginia, and were selected based on offering replicable strategies that help nurses promote health equity and well-being, while highlighting the importance of collaboration with diverse stakeholders. In fact, each of the 2021 Nursing Innovations Fund projects secured dollar-to-dollar matching funds from local and state partners as a condition of the award, which prioritizes coalition building to achieve sustainable change. As of 2020, the Campaign’s state coalitions have raised more than $93 million from community partners.

“This award’s focus on health equity has never felt more urgent,” said Susan B. Hassmiller, PhD, RN, FAAN, senior adviser for nursing at RWJF and director of the Campaign for Action. “This pandemic has put a spotlight on the inequities in our healthcare system. People of color, with lower incomes and those living in remote communities have gotten sick and died in the greatest numbers. Nurses remain on the front lines as trusted providers of care, and they are stepping up to innovate ways to build more equity into the system.”

“It is remarkable to me that despite the unprecedented pressure nurses are under during this pandemic, they are prioritizing the critical work that is needed to create structures to make health care more equitable in every way,” said Susan C. Reinhard, PhD, RN, FAAN, senior vice president and director of the AARP Public Policy Institute, and chief strategist at the Center to Champion Nursing in America, an initiative of AARP Foundation, AARP, and RWJF, which coordinates the Campaign for Action. “We received impressive proposals from all over the country, including some places hardest hit by COVID. I feel so much pride in our profession right now.”

“When nurses reflect the communities they serve, you see significant improvements in health and health equity,” said Eric J. Williams, DNP, RN, FAAN, interim associate dean of health sciences, nursing program director at Santa Monica College, and co-chair of the EDISC. “No one is better positioned than nurses to innovate ways to make their profession more inclusive and diverse.”

The Campaign’s Nursing Innovations Fund was created in 2018 to support work of its state Action Coalitions and allies that inform and influence policy, produce replicable strategies that place nurses in positions as essential partners in providing care, and strategically involve a diversity of stakeholders. This competition was limited to the Action Coalitions or organizations designated by Action Coalitions and required applicants to raise funds to match the award dollars. To date, Action Coalitions and their allies in 23 states have received Nursing Innovations Fund awards to build healthier communities through nursing.

The winners and an overview of each of their projects are listed below:

Delaware

Title: Nursing in the 21st Century: Exposing Middle School Students to a Career in Nursing

School nurses from Delaware’s Brandywine School District will pilot an afterschool program that aims to increase awareness of nursing career pathways among students from underrepresented communities. Working with key stakeholders, the project staff will construct and administer a program that focuses on informing middle schoolers, especially students from racially and ethnically diverse backgrounds, low-income communities, and boys about potential career opportunities in nursing. The pilot will be administered in three district middle schools during the project year and shared with educators across the state.

Kentucky

Title: School Nurses to BARN Camp for the Mental Health and Wellness of Kentucky Youth

The Kentucky Nurses Action Coalition will partner with the University of Kentucky College of Nursing to implement a mental health and wellness training for school nurses with the goal of decreasing youth suicide in the state, which far exceeds the national average. This project expands on the Bringing Action Right Now, or BARN, initiative aimed at addressing health equity via social isolation awareness and training. Project leaders will recruit 100 school nurses to participate in the program and will work with a variety of community stakeholders, including the Actors Theatre of Louisville.

Montana

Title: Coalition Catalyst: Building Health Equity in Montana

The Montana Center to Advance Health Through Nursing (MT CAHN) aims to advance health equity by involving two nurse leaders on the newly formed Montana Health Equity Task Force. This task force was created to influence policy and guide programs that will improve health equity for Montanans, and the nurse leaders will provide a nursing lens and act as a liaison for the state’s nursing community supporting local level, health equity-focused strategies. Additionally, the nurse leaders will utilize the Campaign for Action’s Health Equity Toolkit to help develop and deliver a health equity track at the MT CAHN Nursing Summit in June 2022.

Pennsylvania

Title: Pennsylvania Action Coalition Cohort of Exchanged Learning (PA-ACCEL) Mentorship Program

The Pennsylvania Action Coalition (PA-AC) will expand its current mentoring program that aims to equip nurses from underrepresented backgrounds with the tools they need to be successful nursing students and nursing professionals. Key components of the 2021-2022 program include mentorship matching from the PA-AC’s Nurse Diversity Council, along with exposure to public health advocacy to inspire health equity and justice. Additionally, the coalition will enhance and promote its PA-ACCEL Toolkit as a model for replication nationwide.

Utah

Title: Building Diversity and Health Equity Competence into the Pipeline of Utah’s Nursing Workforce

The Utah Action Coalition for Health, working with Holy Cross Ministries, will pursue a two-part project designed to build diversity and health equity competence in Utah’s nursing workforce pipeline. The project will increase exposure to nursing careers in predominantly Hispanic communities, and embed Certified Health Workers’ knowledge of health equity/disparities into Certified Nursing Assistant training programs. The Campaign for Action’s Health Equity Toolkit will be interwoven in the project’s implementation phase, and a steering committee composed of key partners will be created for guidance. The project will focus on two school districts initially, with the opportunity for expansion later.

West Virginia

Title: Health Equity Skill Building Multimedia Continuing Education Pilot Project

The Future of Nursing West Virginia (FONWV) will develop a Health Equity Skills Building Multimedia Continuing Education (CE) package for nurses and nursing students. It will focus on the multicultural needs of Appalachian and minority communities in rural and underserved areas of the state and cover systemic racism, implicit bias, equity in care for select populations (starting with LGBTQIA), improving culturally competent care, and building effective cross-cultural communication. The goal is to improve nurse and student nurse skills in building healthier relationships that address disparities, particularly related to stress and trauma.

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About the Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action

The Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action is a national initiative of AARP Foundation, AARP and RWJF, working to implement the National Academy of Medicine’s evidence-based recommendations on the future of nursing. The Campaign includes Action Coalitions in nearly every state and the District of Columbia and a wide range of health care professionals, consumer advocates, policy-makers, and the business, academic, and philanthropic communities. The Center to Champion Nursing in America, an initiative of AARP Foundation, AARP and RWJF, serves as the coordinating entity for the Campaign. Learn more at www.campaignforaction.org. Follow on Twitter at @Campaign4Action and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/CampaignForAction.

The post Campaign Names Winners of 2021 Nursing Innovations Fund Award appeared first on Campaign for Action.

The Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action creates a space where nurses and nursing organizations can partner with consumers, business leaders, educators and others in the community to drive change, with its state-based coalitions on the leading edge of that change. And when the Campaign, an initiative of AARP Foundation, AARP and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, developed its Nursing Innovations Fund  awards, requiring that awardees secure one-to-one matching funds was a way to encourage that kind of wider collaboration and buy-in for projects in the communities that awardees seek to serve.

One example of a highly successful collaboration comes from the state coalition in West Virginia, the Future of Nursing West Virginia, which has created an impressive program to help nurses learn to start and run their own practices. Just last week, the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC), which works for sustainable community and economic development, announced it will award the coalition $630,000 to establish the West Virginia Center for Nurse Entrepreneurship. That grant is about half of the $1.3 million that the coalition has leveraged after securing an original $25,000 Campaign innovations fund award in 2018 to teach nurses how to launch health-related businesses.

This latest ARC award means the coalition can build a physical space to foster entrepreneurial activities and increase economic opportunities for nurses, especially advanced practice nurses. The West Virginia team will also be able to grow the pilot project training curriculum, provide regional training for nurses looking to be successful entrepreneurs, and expand an online business directory of West Virginia nurses. Staff will train, coach, mentor, and provide financial resources to 100 nurse participants who are expected to open 40 businesses over three years. Project partners include the West Virginia Small Business Development Center and the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce. The U.S. Economic Development Administration and the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation are providing additional funding.

Aila Accad, MSN, RN

This award is a capstone to work started under the determined, passionate leadership of the late Aila Accad, MSN, RN who served as executive director at Future of Nursing West Virginia, and who died Sept. 6, shortly before this grant announcement. “In many ways, Aila Accad was the heart of that organization, and her passing is a big loss for everyone – her family and friends, the nursing community and the people they serve,” said Susan Hassmiller, PhD, RN, FAAN, who directs the Campaign for Action, an initiative of AARP Foundation, AARP and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. “But Aila left a remarkable, beautiful legacy that I fully expect her colleagues will continue to build on to improve health and well-being for all in West Virginia.” Hassmiller is also senior adviser for nursing at RWJF and senior scholar in residence and adviser on nursing to the president of the National Academy of Medicine.

Laure Marino, DNP, FNP-BC

Laure Marino, DNP, FNP-BC, interim executive director of the Future of Nursing West Virginia, was the driver and project lead of the center, nurturing it from an idea to a physical space. “I am humbled to implement Aila’s vision and so excited to continue working with nurse entrepreneurs in West Virginia and the around the country to improve health and wellness for all.” Marino was also a Campaign for Action Breakthrough Leader in Nursing who went on to be a Campaign COACH, or Campaign Outreach Advocate for a Culture of Health.

The West Virginia Nurse Entrepreneur Project got started the first year the Campaign’s Nursing Innovation Fund awards were offered, in 2018, when Future of Nursing West Virginia won one of nine inaugural awards. They then got a matching grant from the local Greater Kanawha Valley Foundation, whose mission is “to make thoughtful and proactive investments that grow the multiple forms of wealth necessary for our community to thrive.” The funding allowed the West Virginia coalition to develop a course to train nurses to launch health-related businesses. Fifty nurses completed that course, for which the West Virginia Small Business Development Center provided content support and coaching for the participants, and 20 nurses established new businesses in the area, all as result of that initial investment and training.

Subsequently, the West Virginia coalition has leveraged that first Nurse Innovations Fund award into more investments and matches to make the course available to more aspiring nurse entrepreneurs. They also developed a nurse entrepreneur curriculum for integration into bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate nursing programs. Recently, they received a federal investment of $592,000 and $148,000 in local matches, all of which will ultimately improve access to health care in some underserved rural areas while creating an anticipated 500 new jobs, retaining 70 jobs and generating $10 million in private investment in new nurse-led businesses, from primary care to child care to midwifery.

The Nurse Entrepreneur Project is a natural outgrowth of this state coalition’s earlier major accomplishment: making care more accessible for West Virginians. That happened in 2016, when the state legislature approved a bill that lifted several restrictions and allowed nurses to practice to the full extent of their education and training. The Future of Nursing West Virginia team quickly recognized that nurses would now need some business skills to launch their own practices.

The nine-year campaign to pass the access-to-care law is another example of the power of collaboration. It included AARP West Virginia, the WV Nurses Association (WVNA) and was supported by the Future of Nursing West Virginia, the West Virginia Board of Nurse Examiners, Healthy Kids and Families Coalition, West Virginians for Affordable Healthcare, Citizens Action Group, Heritage Foundation, Federal Trade Commission, and other organizations.

Learn more about the Campaign for Action’s Nursing Innovations Fund awards.

The post The Future of Nursing West Virginia, Creating Jobs, Improving Health appeared first on Campaign for Action.

There are so many reasons to choose a nursing career. Nurses work in a wide range of roles and in almost every setting imaginable. They provide care, advance rehabilitation and cure, provide emotional support, advocate for health promotion, and educate patients, families, and the public on preventing illness and injury. Nurses make a difference in individual lives and communities in ways that have consistently earned them the public’s trust.

In addition to these intrinsic benefits, nursing offers several distinct advantages over some other health careers. The profession welcomes entrants with multiple educational degrees, making it accessible to people from diverse and economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Nursing’s strong career ladder rewards continued education with almost unparalleled opportunities for advancement. And all along the way, nurses can earn real money.  Licensed practical nurses averaged $48,000 a year in 2020, well above the $36,000 personal median income reported by the Census Bureau in 2019—and registered nurses in some markets earn six-figure salaries.

Once the almost exclusive province of white women, the profession has grown increasingly diverse. In 2019, more than a third of new nurse graduates were people of color, and roughly 13% were men; and while statistics on LGBTQ representation are hard to come by, anecdotal reports suggest the field has diversified in this way as well. This increased diversity is making it easier for patients to receive care from nurses who readily understand their expectations. This attribute of care is considered essential to the advancement of health equity—a state in which “everyone has a fair and just opportunity to be as healthy as possible,” according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF).

Susan Reinhard, PhD, RN, FAAN

How nurses can contribute to achieving health equity is the focus of a recent report on the future of the profession from the National Academy of Medicine (NAM). “The NAM report talks about all the ways nurses can advance health equity—and, remarkably enough, one way is by becoming a nurse in the first place,” says Susan Reinhard, PhD, RN, FAAN, senior vice president and director of the AARP Public Policy Institute and chief strategist for the Center to Champion Nursing in America, an initiative of AARP Foundation, AARP, and RWJF, which runs the Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action. “When individuals choose to pursue a career that gives them financial security, that decision also benefits their family, and by extension, their community,” Reinhard said. The Campaign is also an initiative of AARP Foundation, AARP, and RWJF.

Annette Franqui, MBA, CFA

Wealth is a powerful predictor (often called a social determinant) of health and well-being, and nursing has a strong track record of fostering upward mobility. In the United States, the Department of Labor projects growing demand for nurses through 2029, with RN earnings averaging $75,000 annually in 2020. “This career can be a pathway to economic security at a time when that security is elusive for so many people, especially in communities of color,” says Annette Franqui, MBA, CFA, who chairs the AARP Board of Directors. “The 2019 federal Survey of Consumer Finances showed the median wealth of white families was eight times that of Black families and five times that of Hispanic families. There are so many people in vulnerable neighborhoods who have lost their precarious foothold on economic security because of this pandemic,” she says. “A career in nursing can be a very promising path forward.”

Jean C. Accius, PhD

AARP wants to close the wealth gap and ensure that all people, especially communities of color and other historically marginalized groups, can access that pathway, according to Jean C. Accius, PhD, AARP’s senior vice president for global thought leadership. “Disparities rob our nation of its full capacity and deplete it of its potential and prospects. When we foster new opportunities for greater wealth, we create a fair and equal chance for everyone to participate in the full opportunities our nation has to offer. This is not just a moral imperative; it’s also an economic necessity,” Accius says. “We believe a nursing education can provide a pathway to financial security to millions of people,” but he adds, “getting people on that pathway will require considerable ingenuity and support.”

People who have limited financial resources often face barriers to acquiring the education needed to become a nurse in the first place. Hurdles go beyond insufficient funds to cover the cost of tuition. Would-be applicants facing housing instability, food insecurity, and other byproducts of poverty, may also lack access to reliable internet and the financial literacy needed to complete the college application process and make sound decisions about college loans.

The District of Columbia (D.C.) is helping some residents overcome these hurdles. In August, the D.C. Council unanimously supported the Nurse Education Enhancement Act of 2021, which provides $5.8 million over three years to support training and education for certified nursing assistants, home health aides, and medication assistants. Program participants are eligible for free tuition and fees as well as transportation costs and school supplies. The program also provides a monthly stipend students can use toward living expenses. Students who find employment in one of these jobs for at least two years are then eligible to apply for a discounted or free nursing education at the University of the District of Columbia (UDC). This includes obtaining higher education credentials for professional advancement.

“For more than a decade here in the District of Columbia, we’ve seen the number of direct care workers shrink, all while the need for them has only increased,” says Louis Davis, Jr., MPA, director, AARP District of Columbia (D.C.). He says a recent survey by the DC Coalition on Long Term Care found that over half of respondents currently did not have enough home health aides to staff other clients for every shift; 67 percent said the closure of several training programs will affect their ability to hire more staff; 95 percent expressed concerns about their ability to hire enough home health aides; and 100 percent of long-term care providers said they support providing more career pathways into the health care sector. “That’s why AARP chose to support and endorse this legislation and worked with the D.C. Council to ensure its passage,” Davis says. “The men and women who become certified and licensed and go on to earn nursing degrees will help people live longer, where they choose to live.”

As someone with a passion for supporting family caregivers, Reinhard—also chief strategist of AARP Public Policy Institute’s family caregiving initiatives—was understandably excited by news of D.C.’s commitment to strengthening the home health workforce. “This effort dovetails beautifully with everything the Campaign for Action has been doing to support health equity by diversifying the nursing workforce,” she says, referencing the Campaign’s ongoing initiative to foster mentoring programs at educational institutions serving Black, Hispanic, and American Indian/Alaska Native students. “It also aligns with the missions of AARP’s Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion and our Global Thought Leadership team” she adds. “It’s heartening to see the saying ‘think globally, act locally’ playing out in the service of such important goals: diversifying the nursing workforce and giving people from economically disadvantaged communities a path to financial security.”

To learn more on this topic, listen to the recording of our February, 2021, Health Equity Action Forum, Nursing as a Career to Achieve Financial Security.

The post In D.C. and Across the Nation, Nursing Provides a Path to Economic Well-Being appeared first on Campaign for Action.

As we find ourselves in the midst of another COVID-19 surge with hospitals once again reaching capacity, there has been much discussion about COVID-19 vaccination and whether this had become a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.” What might surprise some is the rate of vaccine hesitancy among healthcare workers, many of whom have been on the frontlines throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

Vaccine hesitancy is defined by the World Health Organization as a “delay in acceptance or refusal of vaccines despite availability.” Despite the availability of multiple highly effective and safe COVID-19 vaccines and the prioritization of healthcare workers for early vaccination, an August 2021 report from the COVID States Project found that 27% of healthcare facility employees remain unvaccinated. In long term care facilities like nursing homes where residents are among those most vulnerable to severe COVID-19 infection and death, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data through April 4, 2021 show that only 56.8% of long term care facility healthcare workers were vaccinated against COVID-19. The same CDC data showed the lowest rates by profession were for nurses (56.7%) and aides (45.6%). A July 2021 survey of almost 5,000 nurses conducted by the American Nurses Association found that 1 in 8 nurses have not been vaccinated against COVID-19.

Some of the most high-profile cases of unvaccinated healthcare workers include 117 Houston Methodist Hospital staff members who sued to overturn the hospital’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate and a COVID-19 outbreak at a Kentucky skilled nursing facility that was traced back to an unvaccinated employee. Nurses’ COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy has even led to the delay of patient care such as when all four nurses at a Kansas County Health Department refused to administer COVID-19 vaccines to the public.

It is of particular importance that nurses are commonly the most vaccine hesitant members of the healthcare workforce. Nurses have been named the most trusted profession in the U.S. for the last 20 years and have high levels of direct patient contact. Most people in the U.S. also cite their personal healthcare providers as their most trusted source of COVID-19 vaccine information. Not only are vaccine hesitant nurses highly trusted sources of COVID-19 vaccine (mis)information, but their vaccination status and related likelihood to be infected with COVID-19 can also affect whether a healthcare facility is adequately staffed to provide safe patient care.

However, this is not a COVID-19-specific issue for healthcare workers or nurses. Previous research on the seasonal influenza vaccination practices of hospital workers has found that nurses consistently have the lowest flu vaccination rates of all healthcare worker positions surveyed. In the early COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy research, the trend of nurses having the lowest vaccine intent among healthcare workers continues to hold true. Only assistant nurses and aides had lower rates of COVID-19 vaccine intent. My own research found that California registered nurses surveyed from August 14, 2020 through December 2, 2020 were just as vaccine hesitant as other U.S. West Coast adults based on the Vaccine Attitudes Examination Scale, a validated questionnaire that measures hesitancy toward vaccines in general. Additionally, 29.7% of nurses I surveyed reported that they would be unlikely to receive a COVID-19 vaccine if one were available.

I worry how vaccine mandates and healthcare workers’ vaccine hesitancy may affect staffing in the coming months at hospitals and nursing homes, where short staffing has been commonplace long before the COVID-19 pandemic. Hospital CEOs have gone on record sharing the calculus they face of whether they will lose more employees to COVID-19-related illness and quarantine than the number who would quit in response to a COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Already, Nebraska is specifically targeting unvaccinated nurses to fill staffing shortages at state facilities by advertising their lack of a COVID-19 vaccine mandate. What will this mean for states with healthcare worker vaccine mandates or the nursing home industry? Will there be a great migration of healthcare workers to states without vaccine mandates? Will healthcare workers leave the field or retire to avoid mandated vaccination? Answers to these questions will be especially relevant to healthcare in the U.S. as we approach cold and flu season when hospitals are historically more heavily impacted.

Linda Vuong, MS, RN, CCRN, is a pulmonary hypertension nurse coordinator at UC Davis Health who studies vaccine hesitancy among nurses.

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