Raise the Voice! Transforming America’s health care system through nursing solutions

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• Healthcare Problems
• Nursing Has Solutions
• The Approach
• Copyright

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• Linda Burnes Bolton, DrPH, RN, FAAN

The American Academy of Nursing was founded to identify and propose resolutions to issues and problems confronting nursing and health, and to develop plans for implementation. This charge was approved by the American Nurses Association Board of Directors in 1973 as part of the implementation plan for chartering the officers and members of the Academy. It is our belief that, to fulfill this charge and the current mission of the Academy, we must engage others. During the 2006 annual conference and business meeting, we launched the Raise the Voice! campaign to engage and inform the healthcare community and the public that nursing has solutions to the current and ongoing health care problems.

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Healthcare Problems 

Health care in America today is inaccessible to many, expensive for most, and fragmented for all. Ensuring that the system delivers the best possible care at acceptable costs requires not just reformation but transformation. We need to move American health care away from its current hospital-based, acuity-oriented, physician-dependent paradigm toward a patient-centered, convenient, helpful, and affordable system. America needs a system that keeps people as healthy as possible, treats patients promptly, comprehensively, and effectively when ill, and—when the time comes—helps people die with dignity and compassion.

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Nursing Has Solutions 

The American Academy of Nursing’s Raise the Voice! campaign is conveying an important message that Americans need to hear: nursing care across the continuum holds great promise for transforming the health care system. Nurses, for example, excel in integrating care for mental and physical health—incorporating the mind, body, and spirit together in treating illness and promoting health. As part of Raise the Voice!, the Academy is showcasing stories of nurse “Edge Runners”—the practical innovators who have led the way in bringing new thinking and new methods to a wide range of health care challenges. Many of those stories underscore the courage and fighting spirit of nurse leaders who have persevered, despite institutional inertia or resistance.

By showcasing the work of nursing in the creation, implementation, and evaluation of programs that have improved health care at the individual, institutional, and community level, we hope to engage the public, healthcare, and policy leaders. We hope to demonstrate that, by adopting, supporting, and spreading the programs, health care can be improved in the United States one community, region or state at a time.

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The Approach 

Raise the Voice! provides a platform for the nursing community to press for new thinking in the health care debate. The initiative will help the Academy take its call for change to Congress, healthcare enterprise, the community, and every other group engaged in that debate. Raise the Voice! spokespersons will appear in newspapers and on TV and radio, telling the story of nurses who are changing America’s approach to health care and, in doing so, helping our citizens live healthier and longer lives.

Throughout 2007, the Academy’s Raise the Voice! campaign will:

The American Academy of Nursing’s Advisory Board for Raise the Voice! is chaired by Dr. Donna Shalala, President of the University of Miami and formerly the US Secretary of Health and Human Services in the Clinton Administration. Joining her on the Board are some of the nation’s foremost health care champions—including foundation executives, consumers, educators, and former federal lawmakers and administrators.

To emphasize the importance of nursing, the legendary Dr. Margretta Madden Styles challenged us in the past to “Think of a world without persons who know what nurses know; believe as nurses believe; who do what nurses do; who have the effect that nurses have on the health of individuals, families and the nation; who enjoy the trust that nurses enjoy from the American people. Imagine a world like that, a world without nurses.” Today and tomorrow, Raise the Voice! will challenge Americans to fully see and imagine the world with nurses, health care leaders at the forefront, creating new, transformational options that help people stay healthy and cope better with illness. The American Academy of Nursing remains committed to using our voice—the collective voices of the healthcare, business, education, public and nursing community—to promote nursing’s contributions, contributions that can resolve the many problems plaguing the health and well-being of society.

To learn more about the campaign and how you can support it, feel free to contact me or AAN’s CEO, Pat Ford-Roegner at: