Future of Nursing Initiative Front and Center at Penn

To the School of Nursing Community,

I am writing to alert you to a very important upcoming event for our School. On Thursday, October 14, from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. we will host the Pennsylvania launching of the Future of Nursing report here in our School. You may know that the Future of Nursing Initiative, which is co-sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Institute of Medicine and led by President Donna Shalala, was established with a goal of examining the capacity of the nursing workforce to meet the demands of a reformed health care and public health system.

This initiative, which was launched in 2008, addresses the future of nursing and the need to transform the nursing profession and is structured in three parts: development of the recommendations and a framework for action that will emerge from the 18 month consensus study, a national conference to be held in early December, 2010 that will bring together stakeholders to develop strategies for how the report recommendations can be implemented, and an implementation phase.

The findings and recommendations of the Future of Nursing Committee will be formally and publicly launched on October 5th, 2010 in Washington, DC. Our event, which will be based on this report, will include a presentation by Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, President and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and a panel presentation that will include Dr. George Thibault, President and CEO of the Macy Foundation and our own Dr. Julie Fairman, who has worked closely with the Future of Nursing Committee, and Dr. Julie Sochalski, who was (in 2009-2010) the AAN-AARP Senior Policy Fellow in Washington, DC working on health care reform “from the front row.” Governor Rendell has also been invited as our special guest.

This initiative comes at a critical time during the health care reform debate, and will provide a blueprint for the nursing profession to proactively meet the demands of a reformed health care system that will offer greater access, higher quality, and more cost-effective care to the American public. To move towards these goals, the nursing profession will have to work with various stakeholders at the national, regional and local levels to set in motion some of the changes that will be needed in health policy, public and private funding, education programs, practice environments, and payment mechanisms. Nurses, physicians, and other health professionals, state and local officials, insurers, health profession educators and other groups all have a stake in how the recommendations are implemented. Part of the purpose of our symposium will be to bring together Philadelphia area stakeholders to learn first-hand about the specific report recommendations and its implications, as well as to begin a dialogue about how we might work together to move them forward to implementation. We see this symposium as the beginning of a process to maximize our collective efforts to improve health care for the citizens of our region.

As members of this community, we all must play a part in and take responsibility for successful health care reform and the findings of this initiative will be a critical component as we move forward. With this in mind, we invite each member of our community to join us on Wednesday, October 14, at 3:00 pm here in Claire M. Fagin Hall to learn more about this important initiative and to participate in these critical dialogues.