Recommended Reading

If you haven’t already read the article from The New York Times magazine about the injustices suffered by women in the poorest countries of the world and the need for foreign aid directed to women, then I encourage you to read it now:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/magazine/23Women-t.html?em#

Written by New York Times Op-Ed columnist Nicholas Kristof and a former Times correspondent, Sheryl WuDunn, the essay is adapted from their book, Half Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide.

“In many poor countries, the greatest unexploited resource isn’t oil fields or veins of gold; it is the women and girls who aren’t educated and never become a major presence in the formal economy,” the authors write. “With education and with help starting businesses, impoverished women can earn money and support their countries as well as their families. They represent perhaps the best hope for fighting global poverty.”

Here are some facts from the essay:
• An obscure but meticulous demographic study that outlined a human rights violation that had claimed tens of thousands more lives… found that 39,000 baby girls died annually in China because parents didn’t give them the same medical care and attention that boys received — and that was just in the first year of life.
• In India, a “bride burning” takes place approximately once every two hours to punish a woman for an inadequate dowry or to eliminate her so a man can remarry…
• It appears that more girls and women are now missing from the planet, precisely because they are female, than men were killed on the battlefield in all the wars of the 20th century. The number of victims of this routine “gendercide” far exceeds the number of people who were slaughtered in all the genocides of the 20th century.
• In the West African country Niger, a woman stands a one-in-seven chance of dying in childbirth at some point in her life.

We should all be morally outraged, and we must support all that can eliminate oppression, inequity, marginalization, and violence. As educators, it is our duty to expose our students to such writing and encourage a dialogue about issues and solutions. Nurses are part of the solution.

Transitional Care Legislation

I am proud to write to you about the stellar testimony before the U.S. Senate Finance Committee by one of our faculty which has led to Congressional bills that are likely to enhance quality of care and decrease disparities. As many of you know, Mary D Naylor, PhD, FAAN, RN, the Marian S. Ware Professor in Gerontology and director of NewCourtland Center for Transitions and Health, has been in the forefront of research producing the evidence for a care model to assist and manage the multiplicity of health problems of frail elders as they move from hospital to home. This transitional care model has the potential of enhancing the quality of life of these patients and their families as well as decreasing cost.

Currently, Dr. Naylor’s model has the potential, with your help, to become law. Findings from her and her team’s research form the basis of the “Medicare Transitional Care Act (H.R.2773) sponsored by Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) and Charles Boustany (R-LA) which was introduced this week in the U.S. House of Representatives. This important legislation is designed to eliminate the thousands of preventable hospital readmissions that occur each year by providing high quality transitional care to high-risk Medicare beneficiaries throughout episodes of acute illness.

Since 1989, Dr. Naylor has led an interdisciplinary program of research designed to improve outcomes and reduce costs of care for vulnerable community-based elders. To date, Dr. Naylor and her research team have completed three National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR)-funded randomized clinical trials focusing on discharge planning and home follow up of high-risk elders by advanced practice nurses. Dr. Naylor and her team of researchers partnered with Aetna Corporation and Kaiser Permanente Health Plan to apply the model in everyday practice. Throughout testing, the model has proven to provide improved quality of care at lower cost by reducing the number of hospital readmissions. One study recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that one-third of Medicare beneficiaries are rehospitalized within 90 days leading to billions of dollars of Medicare payments on unplanned hospital readmission. In short, nurse-conducted research is poised to make an impact on the nation’s healthcare and budget by becoming a Medicare benefit.