Nurses Best Prepared to Explain Health Care Reform

In a Salt Lake City Tribune (UT) opinion piece, Maureen Keefe, dean and professor at the University of Utah School of Nursing and Susan Hassmiller, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation senior adviser for nursing, discuss a critical issue facing our country today: access to quality affordable health care, especially in Utah.  According to Keefe and Hassmiller, Utah faces a daunting challenge for the future as it works to identify how to best provide patient-centered care to both a rapidly growing young and elderly population. But, they say, one opportunity is clear: engage the state’s 23,000 registered nurses as emissaries of health care reform because, “they constitute the largest sector of the country’s health care workforce and not only practice in hospitals, clinics and other facilities but in schools, community centers, businesses and homes….. And they focus on health promotion and disease prevention as much as treatment.” Learn more.

Utah has joined 15 other states in forming a Regional Action Coalition to support the IOM report recommendations for health care reform.