The Campaign for Action

Campaign for Action logoThe Campaign for Action is a national campaign to transform health and healthcare through nursing. The Campaign for Action envisions a healthcare system where nurses contribute to the full extent of their capabilities. The goals for the Campaign for Action are based on recommendations from the Institute of Medicine’s (now the National Academy of Medicine) Future of Nursing report.

The campaign is backed by the AARP Foundation, AARP, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Each state has an action coalition to mobilize nurses, health providers, consumers, educators, and businesses to strengthen nursing on multiple fronts.

The Future of Nursing 2010 - 2020 Report

The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health report was published by the Institute of Medicine in October 2010. The report was the culmination of two years of research on how to transform the nursing profession. It identifies the nursing professional as a central component to improving the healthcare system, and provides evidence-based recommendations on training, education, professional leadership, and workforce policy. These recommendations aim to create a patient-centered healthcare system that relies on research and the transformative power of nursing to improve health across the country.

Key Recommendations

  • Nurses should practice to the full extent of their education and training.
  • Nurses should achieve higher levels of education and training through an improved education system that promotes seamless academic progression.
  • Nurses should be full partners, with physicians and other health professionals, in redesigning health care in the United States.
  • Effective workforce planning and policymaking require better data collection and information infrastructure.
 

The Future of Nursing 2020 - 2030 Report

The National Academy of Medicine on May 11 released its much-anticipated report, The Future of Nursing 2020-2030: Charting a Path to Achieve Health Equity. Like its predecessor from 2010, this report will influence the direction of nursing and health care for years to come.

The report hones in on the problem of health disparities, rooted in centuries of injustice that will take substantive societal change to solve. Achieving health equity will require serious reflection on our identities and responsibilities as nurses, nurse champions and contributing members of society. Then we will need the willpower to turn that reflection into action.

Read the full report here: The Future of Nursing 2020-2030: Charting a Path to Achieve Health Equity

Key Recommendations

  • Creating a shared agenda: All national nursing organizations should initiate work to develop a shared agenda for addressing social determinants of health and achieving health equity. 
  • Supporting nurses to advance health equity: By 2023, state and federal government agencies, health care and public health organizations, payers, and foundations should initiate substantive actions to enable the nursing workforce to address social determinants of health and health equity more comprehensively, regardless of practice setting
  • Promoting nurses' health and well-being: Nursing education programs, employers, nursing leaders, licensing boards, and nursing organizations should initiate the implementation of structures, systems, and evidence-based interventions to promote nurses’ health and well-being, especially as they take on new roles to advance health equity.
  • Capitalizing on nurses' potential: All organizations, including state and federal entities and employing organizations, should enable nurses to practice to the full extent of their education and training by removing barriers that prevent them from more fully addressing social needs and social determinants of health and by improving health care access, quality, and value. These barriers include regulatory and public and private payment limitations; restrictive policies and practices; and other legal, professional, and commercial impediments.
  • Paying for nursing care: Federal, tribal, state, local, and private payers and public health agencies should establish sustainable and flexible payment mechanisms to support nurses in both health care and public health, including school nurses, in addressing social needs, social determinants of health, and health equity.
  • Using technology to integrate data on social determinants of health into nursing practice: All public and private health care systems should incorporate nursing expertise in designing, generating, analyzing, and applying data to support initiatives focused on social determinants of health and health equity using diverse digital platforms, artificial intelligence, and other innovative technologies.
  • Strengthening nursing education: Nursing education programs, including continuing education, and accreditors and the National Council of State Boards of Nursing should ensure that nurses are prepared to address social determinants of health and achieve health equity.
  • Preparing nurses to respond to disasters and public health emergencies: To enable nurses to address inequities within communities, federal agencies and other key stakeholders within and outside the nursing profession should strengthen and protect the nursing workforce during the response to such public health emergencies as the COVID-19 pandemic and natural disasters, including those related to climate change.
  • Building the evidence base: The National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Health Resources and Services Administration, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Administration for Children and Families, the Administration for Community Living, and private associations and foundations should convene representatives from nursing, public health, and health care to develop and support a research agenda and evidence base describing the impact of nursing interventions, including multisector collaboration, on social determinants of health, environmental health, health equity, and nurses’ health and well-being.
 

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