CCNA in the News

CCNA’s Pat Polansky spoke to NurseZone.com during Nurses' Week about ways nursing has changed since the first Nurses' Day in 1954. Pat, who serves as Director of Policy and Communications for the Center, emphasized that the changing needs of patients and families has really driven the nursing profession to respond and lead – an underlying theme of the Institute of Medicine Report, The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health.

An article in the recent edition of Sharing Nursing's Knowledge takes a look at the Future of Nursing Action Coalition in Texas. Led by the Texas Nurses Association and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas, the Texas Action Coalitin - or "Texas Team" - now has more than 120 partner organizations from the business, health care, academia, and other sectors. A state-level executive committee oversees the Action Coalition’s activity and an advisory council provides strategic advice.

Our Wednesday Feature gave you a look at the stories behind the photos that you submitted for our 2011 photo contest.  You were asked to identify one of four categories for entries that aligned with a recommendation area of the IOM future of nursing report as well as submit photos that highlighted health care in rural areas. As a result of these entries we are able to add more images to the CCNA public photo repository representing nurses, patients, and their families across health care, home, and education settings

This week twenty-one state-based collaborations will join fifteen already working as Action Coalitions (ACs), convened to ensure that Americans will have a health care workforce that is prepared to deliver high quality patient-centered care. With technical assistance from the Center to Champion Nursing in America, the ACs will create long-term partnerships through which the Campaign for Action can enlist support from a broad spectrum of health care professionals, and stakeholders from government, business, academia, and philanthropy.

Susan Reinhard and Susan Hassmiller, write in this Journal of Professional Nursing piece, published July 2011, an updated version of their November 2009, article by the same name, "Partners in Solutions to the Nurse Faculty Shortage," about the importance of RWJF, the AARP Foundation, and AARP joining together to raise the level of awareness of the looming shortage of nurses—and the faculty to educate them—that threatens Americans' access to quality health care across all settings.

Photo of CRNA who flies throughout Nebraska providing care to rural patients.

Enter the contest now!

For a second year, the Center to Champion Nursing in America (CCNA) is seeking photographs of nurses leading and delivering patient-centered, collaborative health care to Americans in urban and rural areas of the country.

In a Special Advertising Section on Health & Science Career Advice, the Washington Post reports, health care reform measures enacted last year grant 32 million people greater access to the health care system, and registered nurses are on the front lines as millions more patients seek care.

Nurse education programs across the U.S. are feeling the impact of the downturn in the economy. As more and more states face rising budget deficits that demand cuts in services across the board, no area of funding remains untouched. However, according to CCNA Director Brenda Cleary, the cuts to nursing research and practice programs are especially alarming at this time because of the dramatic increase in the need for nursing services due to health reform implementation coupled with an aging population.

More than 50 national leadership organizations representing consumers, purchasers and providers of health care shared their important perspectives on the role of nurses as a critical element for health reform implementation and a sustainable health delivery system at a Champion Nursing Coalition forum held at AARP on July 28. This meeting on health care and the future of nursing drew a full house of existing and potential Coalition members concerned with forging solutions to build a 21st century nursi