Public Policy Fellow

Testimony for Congress: Understanding the issues

Another of my projects this month is helping to develop testimony for Congress about Title VII and Title VIII of the Public Health Service Act.

Early in January 2008 we learned that the Health, Education, and Labor Committee chaired by Senator Edward Kennedy would be conducting Congressional Hearings for the Reauthorization of Title VII and VIII of the Public Health Service Act. 

Title VII provides funding for all of the Health Professions; Title VIII provides funding for the nursing workforce. 

I am working on testimony to be given by Dr. Susan Reinhard, Director of Public Policy Institute of AARP. 

Testimony will focus on the nursing shortage overall and the need to solve the problem of the faculty shortage before the overall nursing shortage can be solved. The current faculty shortage is projected to intensify as retirements increase in the next 10 years. Thus, we argue, federal policy efforts must be redirected to increase support for nursing faculty development, including specific efforts to enhance nursing schools’ overall capacity to produce greater numbers of professional nurses. 

Priority must be given to deal with the Nurse Faculty shortage because a faculty shortage is the kink in the pipeline of why we can’t solve the overall nursing shortage. 

This testimony will be given from a consumer point of view, illustrating how consumers are affected by the nursing shortage.

It's a very interesting process and I hope to be able to let you know how it turns out!

 

The Center to Champion Nursing in America

Happy New Year!
One of the things I am working on at the moment is assisting in creating the infrastructure for The Center to Champion Nursing in America.  It is really interesting to be involved in the creation of an organization with such important goals!
Here is the Center's description:

 

The Center to Champion Nursing in America

The Center to Champion Nursing in America— a joint initiative of AARP, the AARP Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation—is committed to addressing the growing nursing shortage that threatens access to health care and quality of care across the nation.

With nearly 3 million registered nurses in the United States, nursing is the largest health profession.However, a decline in federal support, state interest and local capacity has left the nation without an adequate supply of nurses. Currently, there are an estimated 118,000 unfilled nursing positions in hospital settings alone. Absent aggressive efforts to reverse this trend, the nurse workforce will be more than one million short of what’s needed to meet health demands by 2020.

A consumer-driven, national force for change, the Center’s goal is to ensure that this country has the nurses it needs to care for all of us, now and in the future. The Center will serve as a focal point for advocacy and the educational efforts of a wide range of organizations and individuals working for affordable, high-quality health care.   Specifically, the Center will advocate at the state and national level to address the nursing faculty shortage by:

• Seeking funding to support expanded nursing education programs and to prepare more nursing faculty.
• Working with nursing leaders, education organizations, health care organizations, business leaders, and policymakers to devise a comprehensive strategy for bringing more nursing faculty into the pipeline and use the powerful voice of consumers to advocate for the resources to      solve the nursing faculty shortage.

The Center will also seek to boost nurse job satisfaction and retention by increasing the involvement of nurses in decision making about care delivery and management. To help empower nurses, the Center will work to create more prominent roles for nursing leaders. In particular, the Center will press for more nurse leaders on the governing boards of hospitals and other health care institutions to provide critically needed perspective on improving the safety and quality of care.

The Center to Champion Nursing in America will use multiple strategies to create positive change.  These include:

· Building Coalitions: The Center will spearhead the development of multi-disciplinary coalitions at both the state and national levels--including health care, business and consumer groups. These coalitions will identify problems, ideas for solving them, and programs and policies that will put those ideas into action.

· Developing a clearinghouse: The Center will gather the information and research that can help drive action and develop a web-based clearinghouse of information that the public and policymakers can understand.

· Harnessing state office capacity: The Center will use AARP state offices to help build public education and advocacy initiatives, and will provide advocacy training and technical assistance to a variety of stakeholders, so they can communicate more effectively with local, state and federal policymakers as well as leaders in the private sector.

· Enhancing communication: The Center will offer spokesperson training, media templates, and strategies to craft effective messages for key audiences.

There is no more critical time than now for this message to be heard. With the support of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and AARP’s own resources, this new public education and advocacy center will frame and highlight key issues—and present solutions for the nursing shortage that affects all Americans.