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The competition was limited to the Campaign’s state-affiliate “Action Coalitions,” or organizations designated by Action Coalitions. Applicants were required to raise matching funds to be considered.

In addition to the award in Missouri, the Campaign announced that Action Coalitions or their designees in Florida, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, Washington, and West Virginia also received awards. Massachusetts, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and West Virginia also received this award last year.

“We are proud to be selected and look forward to building on our work to create replicable strategies that help nurses build a Culture of Health and promote health equity and well-being,” said Tina Lear, Executive Director, Missouri Center for Nursing. “The work we are doing to transform nursing improves health and health care for everyone. We are grateful to AARP Foundation, AARP, and RWJF for this support.”

Tina Lear said the Missouri Center for Nursing will focus on continuing to build the Innovative Care Institute, which was launched by the Center in 2018. The funding allocation will enable the Center to expand program trainings to include remote offerings through a comprehensive online learning management system, statewide reach, dissemination and evaluation.

“As trusted providers on the front lines of care, nurses have a unique understanding of the needs of their communities. These states are demonstrating how nurses are taking that important perspective and using it to implement innovative programs to address the social determinants of health,” said Susan B. Hassmiller, PhD, RN, FAAN, senior adviser for nursing at RWJF and director of the Campaign for Action. “The Foundation is committed to providing states with the support they need to lead efforts that promote health equity and well-being.”

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, added: “We are pleased to support the important work of our Action Coalitions and their designees with this funding opportunity. Since the days of Florence Nightingale, nurses have been making people and communities healthier. Our hope is that each of these organizations will use these funds to continue their work to build a Culture of Health in their state.”

The goal for this two-year award is to assist in the creation of replicable strategies that sustain Action Coalition work while highlighting the importance of collaboration with diverse stakeholders.

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Nursing students interact with social service providers during a role-playing simulation at The College of New Jersey. Photo courtesy of the New Jersey Nursing Initiative.

Nursing programs that want to teach the full range of factors that influence people’s health have an effective tool at their disposal: the Community Action Poverty Simulation (CAPS).

Over the course of two hours, students get a taste of what it’s like to live without ready access to transportation, child care, nutritious food, affordable housing, and the cash needed to cover utilities and other essentials. Students also discover how challenging it can be to access the social services meant to mitigate poverty’s day-to-day realities.

“The simulation puts things in perspective,” says Katie Hooven, PhD, MBA, RN, assistant professor in the department of nursing at The College of New Jersey (TCNJ), located near Trenton, one of the poorest municipalities in the state. “CAPS helps students understand why health care is not everyone’s number one priority. It’s feeding their children and getting to their job.”

CAPS is overseen by the Missouri Community Action Network (Missouri CAN) to help policy makers, community leaders, students and organizations gain a greater understanding of what it means to live in poverty. At last count, roughly 1,500 organizations had licensed CAPS. Among them are almost 40 nursing schools, but because poverty simulations are often run with students studying a variety of majors and professions, CAPS is reaching nursing students on other campuses as well.

In November 80 TCNJ students from a variety of disciplines met at TCNJ to take part in the school’s sixth poverty simulation. In the center of the room, students congregated in“family groups” based on actual clients of the agencies that make up Missouri CAN. They received money, ID cards, dolls to represent young children and scenarios describing their individual situations.

Around the periphery, volunteers took their places at 15 tables representing community institutions—a local school, a utility company, and a pay-day lender among them. Then over the course of four 15-minute simulated workweeks, students fanned out among the tables in search of resources to meet their needs. At the conclusion of each week, the agencies closed, and students regrouped to figure out how they would acquire what they needed the following week. Periodically, students were dealt “Luck of the Draw Cards” representing vehicle breakdowns, medical bills and other unexpected occurrences that could derail even the best-laid plans.

Students who take part in the CAPS simulation report that they find it emotionally stressful to try and access resources within the time constraints of the exercise. Experiencing the frustration of having to wait to see a social worker or having an office close while they stand in line helps them develop an understanding of what low-income families regularly go through. For one TCNJ nursing student, the experience hit close to home, prompting her to reflect on her own upbringing. “I felt bad for my mom,” she told Hooven.

An increased ability to empathize appears to be one bi-product of CAPS, but it is far from the only goal of the simulation. TCNJ licensed CAPS as part of a larger effort, funded by a New Jersey Nursing Initiative grant, to integrate population health content throughout the nursing curriculum. A key goal of the project is to prepare students to mobilize community resources to achieve better health outcomes for their patients. Many TCNJ nursing courses now supplement traditional, hospital-based acute-care activities with community-based activities such as attending birthing classes, conducting home visits, or screening schoolchildren for various health conditions.

“We need a better focus on primary prevention,” says Hooven. “We need nurses that will think about ‘upstream’ solutions.” Those include connecting patients with the community resources that can facilitate their ability to lead healthier lives.

The CAPS simulation helps impart this lesson, and it is made especially vivid at TCNJ by the volunteers, who come from the school’s community partner organizations and simulate roles similar to those they play in the community. (Some schools use faculty members.) Many of the volunteers have lived in or been on the verge of poverty and openly talk about their struggles during a post-simulation debriefing with students. “The volunteers think it’s important that young people understand that when you tell someone to go get their medication filled, it’s not as easy as just handing them a prescription,” Hooven reports.

Research indicates that having a low income is a good predictor of poorer overall health, more chronic health conditions, riskier health behaviors, and more limited access to health care. With more than 39 million Americans living in poverty in 2017, preparing nursing and other health professions students to understand the full range of factors that can influence the health of economically stressed populations is urgent. Nursing programs may want to look into whether CAPS can help them address this need.

To Learn More:

• Visit the Community Action Poverty Simulation (CAPS) for details about the kit, licensing costs, and training for simulation facilitators.
• Download the Poverty Simulation brochure.
• Contact the Missouri Community Action Network (Missouri CAN) to find out who has licensed CAPS in your area. Contact those organizations to see if you can observe their next simulation.

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JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – The Missouri Center for Nursing is pleased to announce that it is partnering with the Arkansas Center of Nursing and the Tennessee Action Coalition to bring the Nurses on Boards Intensive to Branson, Missouri on October 1 & 2 at the Radisson Branson Hotel.

In a time of rapid change in health care that affect all sectors, consumers benefit from having nurses’ point of care perspective present in boardrooms as policy decisions are being made. Nurses possess a unique skill set and an unmatched public trust that is desirable for board service.

The nursing voice is helping to improve the health of communities and the nation through the service of nurses on boards. In Missouri, 3,647 nurses have entered 6,404 boards. The purpose of the tri-state Nurses on Boards Intensive is to continue to educate nurses and help add to the national Nurses on Boards Coalition goal of at least 10,000 board seats by 2020. This includes corporate, governmental, non-profit, advisory, or governance boards or commissions, panels, or task forces that have fiduciary or strategic responsibility.

The one-and-a-half-day workshop is designed to assist nurses working in hospitals, schools, community health centers, clinics, long-term care facilities and other places in building leadership skills. This is a conference for nurses who are passionate about leading change, advancing health and building a Culture of Health.

To register or for more information, visit our website or email. SPACE IS LIMITED for this program. Be sure to reserve your seat today!

This activity has been submitted to the Midwest Multistate Division for approval to award nursing contact hours. The Midwest Multistate Division is accredited as an approver of continuing nursing education by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation.

For more information regarding contact hours, please call Patricia Scott, DNP, RN, PNP, NCSN at 615-473-5617.

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As the largest and most trusted sector of health employment, nurses are imperative to improving the health of Missourians and are invited to participate in the Culture of Health Initiative Project (CHIP) aimed to shape the future of healthcare in Missouri through incorporating the concepts of culture of health in daily nursing practice.

The Missouri Center for Nursing is calling on nurses across the state of Missouri to complete an electronic survey to explore the need for nurses to incorporate value-based/population focused delivery systems into their daily care processes. The goal is to address gaps in resources and education critical systems issues, such as readmission rates in acute care.

Participation in CHIP involves completing an online questionnaire lasting approximately 10 minutes. Responses will be completely confidential and combined with all other responses for analysis. The purpose of this project is to create educational resources for the nurses and healthcare professionals in Missouri that will identify key concepts to build a culture of health and provide value-based population health information, which we hope will benefit your practice. To complete the survey, please visit www.mocenterfornursing.org. For more details or questions about the project, contact info@mocenterfornursing.org.

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JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – The Missouri Center for Nursing and Missouri Action Coalition will hold its Eighth Annual Summit on Thursday, May 31 and Friday, June 1, 2018. Nursing executives, nursing students, point of care nurses, nursing educators and other stakeholders from across the state of Missouri are invited to attend the 2018 Summit: Finding Joy.

The purpose is for attendees to leave energized and equipped to restore joy in their daily work and home. At a time when nurses and other health providers are constantly being asked to do more with less, self-care is often set aside. Traci Hanlon is joining us from Creative Health Care Management to share her passion about the role of mindfulness, positive psychology, wellbeing, and resiliency in clinician professional development as it relates to leadership development, transition to practice, and healthy work environment, especially as they impact engagement, retention, and patient experience outcomes. Christy Dempsey from Press Ganey, will share evidence-based practices regarding improving safety, quality and experience through compassionate connected care. Dr. Bart Andrews, VP of Clinical Practice & Evaluation at Behavioral Health Response will present BETA (Best practices in Evaluation and Treatment of Agitation) training to attendees. This training assists participants in learning to balance how to evaluate and manage the patient simultaneously to minimize adverse responses and workplace violence. Sue Dawson from the Missouri Opioid State Targeted Response Team will be delivering content related to the opioid epidemic and emerging health needs in Missouri.

The Summit will be held Thursday, May 31 and Friday, June 1, 2018 at the Courtyard by Marriott, 3301 LeMone Industrial Boulevard, Columbia, MO 65201.

This activity has been submitted to the Midwest Multistate Division for approval to award nursing contact hours. The Midwest Multistate Division is accredited as an approver of continuing nursing education by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation.

For additional information or to register to attend as a participant or exhibitor, please visit www.mocenterfornursing.org/annual-summit-2018.aspx or email info@mocenterfornursing.org.

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As daily job demands increase and changes continue to happen at an unprecedented speed, it can be difficult at times to remember your purpose. The Center’s Finding Joy campaign aims to help Missouri nurses rekindle their passion. Several activities are planned throughout year to engage Missouri nurses, nursing educators, and nursing leaders. To kick off the campaign, a nurse will be featured each month in the Center’s newsletter and social media accounts for their compassionate care and inspiring actions. Co-workers, patients, friends, and family are encouraged to nominate exceptional nurses to be recognized for their passion.

Additionally, this year’s Annual Summit, scheduled for May 31 and June 1, focuses on the Finding Joy theme. Speakers will present suggestions for and techniques to Find Joy in life and at work. Attendees will leave energized, equipped with a toolkit of resources to take home and to work to continue their learning and reference as needed.

The year will end with a virtual celebration in which nurses will come together to share how they were successful at Finding Joy throughout the year and what they can do to help carry it forward.

For more information or to honor a nurse with a nomination to be our featured recipient, please click here.

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