Public health emergencies, like COVID-19, magnify the negative health consequences experienced by disparate and vulnerable populations resulting in greater health risk, poorer health outcomes and higher death rates. The Wisconsin Center for Nursing (WCN) has led the way in nursing workforce development to better prepare nurses to contribute to a community-based public health response that supports health equity.
Through the development of the Nurses Respond Now Priority Training, WCN partnered with the National RN Practice Development Center to create a curriculum where nurses learn health equity strategies for use in practice that can be applied during a public health emergency to ensure that public health initiatives are better supported, vulnerable populations are identified, and social determinants of health are addressed.
Congratulations now goes out to WCN as a 2023 recipient of the Innovation Award to Advance Health Equity Through Nursing from AARP Center for Health Equity through Nursing and the Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action, an initiative of AARP Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. This Innovation Award will expand on WCNs work to date by focusing on collaboration with State Emergency Preparedness initiatives to reduce system barriers and education of nurses to strengthen a statewide deployable volunteer nurse corps to address the needs of vulnerable populations during public health emergencies.
The Nurses Respond Now Priority Training provides individual nurses and healthcare organizations an effective way to meet the Future of Nursing 2020-2030 Recommendation #8: Preparing Nurses to Respond to Disasters and Public Health Emergencies.
Read/Download Report Brief: Preparing Nurses to Respond to Disasters and Public Health Emergencies