transforming America’s health system through nursing solutions
Health care in America today is inaccessible to many, expensive for most and fragmented for all. Enabling the system to deliver the best possible care at an acceptable cost requires not just reformation but transformation – moving 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 the patient promptly, comprehensively and effectively.
Through its Raise the Voice campaign, the Academy is mobilizing its fellows, partner organizations and health leaders to ensure that Americans hear and understand the exciting possibilities for transforming the health system – and also that they see how nurses are leading the way. Due to the successes during the first year of the campaign, in 2007, the Academy received a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to scale up activities and provide a platform to inform policymakers, the media, health providers and consumers about nurse-driven solutions for an ailing health system – and to highlight the successes taking place every day.
Raise the Voice is a platform for the nursing community to press for new thinking in the health debate. The initiative helps the Academy take its call for change to Congress, the administration, the medical community and every other group engaged in that debate. Raise the Voice tells a powerful story: how nurses are creating new, transformational options that help people stay healthy and cope better with illness. It is a story that Americans need to hear.
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As part of Raise the Voice, the Academy is showcasing 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. Edge Runners have developed care models and interventions that demonstrate significant clinical and financial outcomes. Many of the stories underscore the courage and fighting spirit of nurse leaders who have persevered despite institutional inertia or resistance.
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The Academy utilizing the breadth of expertise of its fellows among Raise the Voice and the expert panels is hosting a series of Raise the Voice: Critical Conversations in public forums. These conversations are another platform to inform policymakers, media, health providers, and consumers about nurse-driven solutions based on research evidence for an ailing health system.
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Advisory Council
The Academy’s national advisory council for Raise the Voice is chaired by Gail Wilensky, a health economist who served as Administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration, and Jackie Judd, former vice president for multimedia for Kaiser Health News. The previous co-chairs include former Pennsylvania Governor, Edward G. Rendell and former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala. Joining Wilensky and Judd on the board are some of the nation's foremost health care champions including foundation executives and former federal lawmakers and administrators.
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More About Raise the Voice
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