A place-based career fair that incorporates community voices
into the recruiting process for a variety of local healthcare
organizations serving vulnerable communities.
Potential partner(s): Healthcare Consortiums (e.g. Alameda
Health Consortium)
An online and physical repository of nurse science, history,
and current best practices. Located in Washington D.C., this
center is run much like an interactive museum that's also open
to the public to make nurse knowledge easily accessible. The
center hosts future nurses (to explore different career
tracks), current nurses (as a Library where they can perform
research), and retired nurses (where they can give back) to
engage in various programing.
Inspiration: Exploratorium in SF, the Smithsonian in DC,
Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown
A reality television program that showcases the everyday lives
of working nurses on and off shift or head-to-head nurse
competitions. Consider working with a creative agency and a
production company willing to work with/in underserved
communities that help explore and portray the highs and lows
of nursing.
Inspiration: Reality TV progams
Potential partner(s): Netflix, Amazon, Hulu
A national communication campaign to surface the career
journey of successful nurse leaders from diverse backgrounds
and from across the country targeting 7th-12th graders (high
school students).
Potential partner(s): Creative agency, Media production
company, Nurse associations
An annual state-based report that assesses ASN programs
against each other on topics such as cost/debt, work/life,
support, diversity, professional options, etc. to help
prospective students make better decisions around selecting
nursing school.
Inspitation: World News, Consumer Reports
Potential partners: Media outlet(s), Self-pubish, Creative
agency
A public resource surfacing the 10 worst things in various
areas of nurse life, including but not limited to: enterprise
technologies (EHR), productivity technologies (automation),
employers (healthcare venues), legislation (policy), etc. from
reliable third-party reviewer(s).
Inspitation: Consumer Reports
Potential partners: Media outlet(s), Self-pubish, Creative
agency
An organic workforce development model based within Federally
Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) that sponsors individuals
from the communities they serve to pursue nurse or allied
health education while gaining paid work experience with the
FQHC. Sponsorship may include financial aid towards tuition,
child, housing, meal, and transportation support.
Potential partner(s): LifeLong Medical (CA), Health Pointe
(TX)
A radical partnership with a four-year university and local
health system(s) to bring BSN level education into various
care environments in underserved communities via a hybrid,
team-based model (onsite and online) designed to develop a
BIPOC nursing workforce.
Potential partner(s): Emory's Distance Accelerated BSN (DABSN)
program
A workforce development model that leverages a robust network
of post-secondary education centers and local/regional
healthcare organization relationships to provide remote/online
learning opportunities to under/unemployed and
underrepresented adults and job placement for a significantly
larger number of allied health tracks/roles than would be
available otherwise.
Potential partner(s): Futuro Health, Central Texas Allied
Health Institute
An organic health worker development model focused providing
the blueprint for how to promote promising existing
lower-level staff at Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC)
and Community Health Centers (CHC) to upper-level
patient-facing care roles across a variety of allied health
functions.
Potential partner(s): HealthPointe FQHC in Bryan, Texas
A free web-based tool that allows, on the front end, a
prospective nursing student to input tuition, financial aid,
rent, location (cost of living), etc., in order to calculate
the time it would take for different nursing degrees (Diploma,
ASN, BSN) to pay itself back in a given area of the country.
On the back-end, the data could help the foundation identify
qualified candidates for financial aid.
Inspiration: Progressive (online custom acquisition model)
Potential partner(s): Creative agency, Associations
A new type of nursing program that minimizes the
classroom/didactic portion of nursing in favor of maximizing
patient-facing time and exposure to different nurse-based
workflows and roles throughout care delivery.
Potential partner(s): Commuity College, Online College
A national clearing house that redirects qualified
undergraduate nursing candidates to local/regional
post-secondary nursing institutions with capacity to accept
applicants and pre-packaged financial aid at little or no
cost. Consider automatic admission algorithm that matches
candidates to next best available school.
Inspiration: Uber, AirBnB
Potential partner(s): Scholar Snapp, Liaison, Futuro Health,
Large Online Schools (WGU)
A new model for a BSN degree at 4-year nursing programs that
give neighboring healthcare employers tuition rates comprable
to the cost of online programs (subsidized by a network of
philanthropies) to get the ADN RN nurses a BSN in less than
two years. Consider co-creating curriculum with key employers.
Potential partner(s): Nursing School and their healthcare
delivery network (e.g., UCONN)
An award focused on supporting Indigenous Americans who reside
on reservations to overcome financial barriers to attend
post-secondary nurse and allied health education. Consider
setting this up as a national/regional scholarship fund or
career impact bond model for healthcare professionals on
tribal lands.
Potential partner(s): Bureau of Indian Affairs, Phi Theta
Kappa
An award that provides financial support for tuition and
living expenses to help BIPOC people (Black, Indigenous, and
people of color) living in underserved communities overcome
barriers to attending post-secondary education. Consider
supporting existing programs that have established productive
relationships with local/regional community college systems.
Potential partner: AAPINA Scholarship, J&J - AACN Minority
Nurse Faculty Scholarship, NAHN Scholarships, NBNA
Scholarships, NSCDA American Indian Nurse Scholarship
An award designed to address the financial barriers (imposed
by employer or one's own personal budget) related to a nurses'
desire to increase their clinical and/or professional skills
for career advancement and/or improved quality of care through
formal (e.g., degrees, certifications) and informal (e.g.,
conferences, self-help) educational models/tracks.
Potenial partner(s): Other Foundations
A national award targeting underemployed, unemployed adults
seeking financial support in their effort to become Licensed
Practical Nurses (LPN, LVN) or Certified Nurse Assistants
(CAN)
Potential partner(s): Other foundations (see:
nursingschoolhub.com)
A national award looking to expand access to post-secondary
education by providing financial aid to individuals from
underrepresented communities that are committed to
staying/serving their local communities.
Potential partner(s): Johnson & Johnson
A practical online course that covers the topic of managing
the demands of going back to school (e.g., study habits,
taking notes, housing, nutrition, childcare, etc.) for older
adults. The course materials include a diverse set of case
studies that share how recent nurse graduates (made up of
older adults going back to school) juggled it all.
Potential partner(s): Education experts, Creative agency,
Nurse influencers
A turnkey model that provides underrepresented communities
across the country with the means and knowledge to stand-up a
charter school K-18/20 in their area that is focused on health
sciences with an emphasis on nurse and allied health tracks.
Potential partner(s): k20wa.org, Broward & Methodist (FL),
Rhode Island Nurses Institute Middle College
A state-based platform/resource that helps establish
partnerships between local community colleges and school
districts to provide high school students with the opportunity
to enroll in nurse and allied health classes at the college
level for dual credit towards their high school diploma and
their particular health worker degree.
Potential partner(s): Community College, School District
A participatory program in which high performing student
nurses are selected to work with legislators, policy makers,
and public officials that run municipal/county Public Health
Departments or state Health and Human Services Departments to
learn about the legal/policy framework and funding mechanisms
in which public health is delivered/realized.
Inspiration: Boys/Girls State by American Legion
An online platform where experienced and veteran nurses are
matched to first- and second-year nurses to provide them with
mentorship opportunities outside of their employer
environment. Nurse mentors receive a variety of benefits
(including, but not limited, to compensation). All platform
users are able to create virtual profiles to enhance the
customization/personalization of the match-making process.
Potential partner(s): nursessupportingnurses.com, Healthcare
HR Depts
A new nursing curriculum that expands nursing education at the
bedside by moving beyond hospital-only rotations to
outpatient, primary care, and community care contexts, with an
emphasis on reaching rural and underseved health venues.
Potential partner(s): Academic centers with a rural health
mandate (e.g., Texas A&M Univ.), Vertically integrated
healthcare delivery organizations (e.g., Kaiser Permanente)
A platform that provides an interactive self-guided /
self-reported digital tool for student nurses to chart
possible career pathways through a description of professional
milestones and examples of nurses in those roles today to
reach out to.
Potential partner(s): Creative agency, Association(s)
An online resource that helps recent nursing program graduates
prepare and for the NCLEX test through a variety of online
study formats that take into account different learning
barriers: dyslexia, test anxiety, ADHD, dysgraphia, and
dyscalculia. The resource also helps identify and bolster weak
areas for people who fail the test the first time around.
Potential partner(s): Nursing.com, Kaptest
An award that provides financial support to BIPOC student
graduates of any nursing program to cover the cost of the
NCLEX test.
Potential partner(s): Other Foundations
A digital/online resource that helps new nurse graduates build
and store resumes based on a variety of templates and get
working nurse feedback and compensation data for the area and
field of nursing they are targeting.
Inspiraton: Wix, Canva
A new consortium of community-based healthcare profession
associations that organize longitudinal care immersions in
their local area where nurses and other health professionals
(e.g., pharmacist, physicians, community health workers,
epidemiologist, public health officials) work together to
understand the changing health needs of their communities in
order to develop new, hyper-local interaction and
communication models that reflect that area's health worker
capacity and capability.
Potential partner(s): Public health department(s), Academic
medical centers, Nursing and Medicine/Health Journals
A national platform providing the administrative, legal, and
financial infrastructure to enable working nurses to host
day-long to week-long immersions into their day-to-day work to
relevant stakeholders in their local area (including aspiring
nurses, administrators, policy makers, public officials,
etc.). Immersions allow stakeholders to gain deeper empathy
for value brought to patient care and the systemic challenges
in care delivery.
Potential partner(s): Public policy school(s), Nursing
school(s), Academic medical center(s), State/Federal officials
An alternative track in the formal education of nurses that
combines classroom instruction specific to nursing in primary
care with paid onsite clinical experience under the
supervision and guidance of preceptors, coaches, and a program
director. Consider starting with rural and underserved
communities.
Potential partner(s): HealthPoint & Texas A&M Univ.
A community organization that provides a venue to transition
recent immigrants (with nurse or allied health training and
experience in a different country) through career counseling,
reciprocity navigation, resume assistance, job placement, and
short-term engagements with willing community participants to
apply their know-how and get the confidence to enter more
formal healthcare roles/settings.
Inspiration: Barber & Cosmetology Schools, YMCA
A pay for success model to prove out the value of nurse
residency programs to skeptical public, private, and
non-profit health systems. The bond uses philanthropy to seed
the residency program costs for a specified period in order to
measure its performance against a control benchmark. If nurse
cohort out-performs benchmark, then employers commit to hiring
nurses and make initial funders "whole" recruiting and
training savings realized by the program.
Inspiration: UP Fund at Social Finance, Austin Echo (PFS-PSH)
A nurse residency model that provides turnkey resources and
financial aid to build the initial infrastructure needed to
launch nurse residencies in both inpatient (e.g., hospitals)
and outpatient (e.g., primary care) environments. Emphasis is
placed on establishing long term commitments to compensate
both new nurse residents and preceptors as part the award.
Potential partner(s): AACN Nurse Residency Program
A multi-state endorsed digital clearing house that allows
nurses to easily gain reciprocity for their various nursing
licenses and credentials to enable them to work in other
states. Consider building a robust framework, from the
begining, that integrates various licensure standards across
the care continuum to enhance nurse mobility.
Potential partner(s): Licensing entities, State-based
Boards/Associations
A dedicated section of local libraries occupied by nurses to
support health literacy covering curated health information
for the public as well as archives of local nurse best
practices that are culturally and socially relevant to the
area. Over time, these outposts can contribute to a
centralized national archive of resources.
Potential partner(s): Local/Municipal Library System, Academic
Medical Center, Nursing Schools
A comprehensive and authoritative national database containing
an inventory of all relevant credentials/licenses for nurses
and allied health workers across every state and types of
healthcare settings. The database is searchable and
configurable to help researchers, policy makers, students, and
nurse professionals alike.
Inspiration: UT Austin's VISLAB
Potential partner(s): Academic medical research group,
Associations, Creative agency
A non-profit or social impact for-profit public utility—funded
by public dollars, philanthropy, taxes, revenue—that maintains
the infrastructure needed to perform the public service of
placing nurses in jobs that prioritize safety and health
outcomes.
Inspiration: Ride Austin (Non-profit Ride Sharing), Google
Fiber
Potential partner(s): Navi Nurse, Public Health Dept.
A distributed license/credential/resume exchange platform that
helps nurses disintermediate the proprietary nature of digital
profiles created within staffing agencies or state agencies so
they can own/manage who and what they share about their
professional history with anyone (including prospective
employers) securely.
Inspiration: Blockchain
Potential partner(s): Greenlight Credentials
A new license for registered nurses that is universally
recognized in every state in the country for use within any
healthcare environment and by all education systems.
Potential partner(s): All State Boards, National Nurse
Licensure Associations
A yearly assessment of the most desirable healthcare
institutions for new nurses. Rating will cover topics such as
best first job, best peer support, best multigenerational org
structure, etc. Communication of the report anchors on the
message that nursing careers should be sustainable, rewarding
and desirable careers.
Inspitation: World News, Consumer Reports
Potential partners: Media outlet(s), Self-pubish, Creative
agency
A legal-aid digital application that reviews nurse employment
terms and contracts and calls attention egregious, unethical,
or unfavorable language around duties, responsibilities,
liabilities, benefits, disclosures and compensation with
layperson explanations to empower nurses to push back or
negotiate better terms.
Potential partner(s): Law Schools, Nursing Schools, AI/ML
technologist, Health-tech start-up team
A searchable database of healthcare organizations that
displays nurse-reported information on compensation,
organizational culture, and other work-related factors (e.g.
ratios, living costs, support, training, safety, etc.) to help
nurses review and evaluate the prospective employers.
Inspiration: Glassdoor, True Car
Potential partner(s): NursePay.Com
A practical and honest playbook for how to manage the demands
and frenetic schedules of nursing careers (e.g., housing,
nutrition, childcare, injury, etc.). The playbook can either
be open-sourced online/social media or facilitated in-person
by 3-5 year nurses, paying partiular attention to the
generational gap when communicating.
Potential partner(s): Nurse influencers, Healthcare training
companies, Creative agency, Association, Unions
A nation-wide legal resource that provides nurses with
third-party counsel over the phone and/or through chat/email
that's tailored to (but not limited to) early-career nurses
that find themselves with hard to ask questions regarding
contract terms and conditions of employment, legal liability
in care delivery, patient advocacy, and/or licensure concerns.
The aim is to radically democratize this space and give access
to legal advice to over 4M nurses.
Potential partner(s): AI technologists, Health-tech start-up
team, Union(s), Creative agency
A policy agenda looking to establish sizable state and/or
federal tax relief for nurses as a way to incentivize the
growth and resilience of the national nursing workforce in
anticipation of an aging and sickening population.
Inspiration: Travel nurse salary tax exemption (select states)
A suite of digital therapeutics focused on post-traumatic
stress disorder (PTSD) designed as mobile digital applications
that nurses can use on and off the job. Consider
cross-pollinating tech and interventions designed for military
veterans for nurses who have been traumatized by covid and
other extreme work experiences.
Potential partner(s): PTSD intervention developers, Digital
health technologist, Health-tech start-up team
A state-based program that guarantees minimum monthly stipends
paid to nurses to cover known cost-of-living shortfalls in
expensive/ underseved geographies.
Possible partner(s): Healthcare Districts, Multi-State Lottery
Agencies (MUSL), State Health & Human Services
An online community serving first year nurses at scale (250K+)
with mental health services and peer support groups that help
socialize challenges (air out/ open up) with the nursing
profession and the steep learning curve needed to adjust to
the pressures and frenetic pace of nurse life.
Potential partner(s): American Psychiatric Nurses Association
(NPNA) , Union(s)
A regional program that disburses one-time grants to nurses
working on the front lines to address immediate needs, from
additional equipment to family care and beyond. Note: these
are not provided to healthcare businesses, but direct
interventions.
Potential partner(s): Other foundations
A policy agenda that seeks to promote, at a state or federal
level, the passing of laws/regulations that standardize
minimum nurse-patient ratios across all types of healthcare
setting, including but not limited to in-patient hospitals.
Potential partner(s): Nurse associations, Unions, Existing
initiatives
A digital health market-network that fosters nurse well-being
throughout their career journey with a marketplace of tools
and resources amid an active community of nurses sharing their
recommendations, experiences, and reviews.
Inspiration: Fifth Window App, Market Networks (We Are Here)
Potential partner(s): Nursing Schools, Unions, Associations
An remote/onsite resource that provides immediate, around the
clock support to any nurse who experiences an adverse event or
trauma during a shift. The response team facilitates a
coordinated effort for that nurse to step off the floor to
meet with a trained peer responder (phone, chat, in-person)
addressing moral injury or trauma related to on-the-job
experiences (from working conditions, culture, abuse, etc.).
Inspiration: nationalpeersupport.com, New Jersey's Nurse 2
Nurse Peer Support Helpline
Potential partner(s): Department of Veterans Affairs (VA),
UCONN's Peer-to-Peer Model, National Center for Peer Support
A remote legal team that supports a national hotline for
nurses to report bad actors and institutions promoting illegal
or patient-jeopardizing practices. This team works closely
with regulators to channel credible violations to the
appropriate authorities.
Potential partner(s): State/Fedeal Healthcare Regulators and
Departments
A national resource that provides real-time help to nurses
through a mobile application to bridge ethnic or racial
cultural gaps within care teams, administrators, patients and
their circle of support. This is not a language translator,
rather a cultural one to help BIPOC nurses better connect with
patients across shifts.
Potential partner(s): Community Activist/Organizers
A skills-based training course that teaches a new generation
of nurses (Gen Z, Millennials) how to identify deeply rooted
sexism and racism in the health system, before they become
encultured, to activate their native disposition to speak up
and create change.
Potential partner(s): DEI consulting groups (e.g. TMI
Consultancy)
A neutral, non-governmental group that monitors all types of
healthcare environments to report unsafe, illegal, or
unethical practices impacting clinical staff and patients.
Watchdog group focuses on building and maintaining a robust
data infrastructure with supporting industry mobile tools
(e.g. body cameras) for all clinical staff to monitor and
track their operating conditions, from excessive workloads to
workplace violence (verbal and physical).
Potential partner(s): Local unions, National licensing
boards/entities, CMMI, Health & Human Services Dept., Other
Foundations
An expert led, hands-on immersive workshop that works with
nurses to refine/evolve their everyday workflows that address
increasingly acute patient mental health needs and
comorbidities. Workshops target undeserved communities
(experiencing high rates of Serious Mental Illness) that can
be conducted in-person or virtually but are always focused on
adapting real workflows and their local constraints.
Potential partner(s)L Local Mental Health Authority (e.g.,
Integral Care), Nursing schools, Primary care network(s)
(e.g., Austin Regional Clinic)
An open-source digital platform to manage the connectivity
(and collection of data) of the devices that nurses use to
track their activity output/ performance in order to allow
software developers to build new mobile applications that
drive quality improvement, better decision making, and new
care model design from the nurse perspective.
Potential partner(s): IBM, iTechArt, Oxagile, SumatoSoft
A collection of interdisciplinary teams called to support the
work of state and federal regulatory bodies to assess the
physical space, operations, and clinical aspects of care
delivery in order to conceive and propose interventions that
improve the safety of nurses at the bedside.
Inspiration: Mountain Rescue Teams
A suite of sensors and devices embedded into a modern care
team and/or unit to capture, track, and quantify the
production of nurse work and its physiological toll/limits in
real-time. Works with other databases (e.g., EHR, RCM) to
establish a essential infrastructure to study nurse work at a
much bigger scale.
Inspiration: Professional Soccer Players
Potential partner(s): Creative agency, IoT Tech (e.g.,
iTechArt, Oxagile, SumatoSoft), Academic medical center
An inverted training curriculum development model that takes
abundant user-generated content around nurse
best-practices/workarounds/shortcuts found through various
social media channels (e.g., TikTok, YouTube, Instagram) and
runs them through a vetting process to verify what content
nurses and allied health workers can confidently rely on/
trust.
Inspiration: Coursera, Khan Academy, Twitter Verified Accounts
A mobile application that can be used among nurses in the same
unit and across different shifts to debrief asynchronously
with one another around continuous improvement opportunities
in care delivery. The orientation of the application is to
facilitate constructive criticism/review of workflows and
actions taken by nurses to change the traditionally negative
environment of reviews.
Inspiration: Aviation Industry Flight Reviews, Slack
A social-media based approach to help standup and maintain
formal networks/communities that support underrepresented
nurses surface and discuss the unintentional and intentional
segregation in hospitals. Consider attracting and supporting
nurse researchers at the regional level to surface lived
experiences across the country.
Potential partner(s): NAACP, Nurse researchers, Nurse activist
An open-source resource for nurse leaders/operators to deploy
and/or modify proven flexible nurse staffing models for a
variety of care settings, from ERs and ICUs to primary care
and assisted living centers. Consider mixed new/veteran nurse
pools, accommodating nurses who are starting a family, nurses
wanting greater location flexibility, nurses wanting greater
variety of assignments, etc.
Potential partner(s): Nursing school research goups (Univ. of
Florida), Academic medical centers (to pilot and test)
A transparency initiative across different care delivery
venues to showcase real working conditions that capture
compromising situations nurses are in as part of their
day-to-day activities.
Inspiration: Police body cameras
A research and development effort aimed to incorporate modern
technologies into tasks and workflows nurses carry out
everyday across various healthcare settings to increase
productivity while lowering avoidable risks due to adverse
working conditions.
Potential partner(s): American Nurses Foundation (ANF)
Technology Enabled Nursing Practice initiatives.
A public pledge that nursing programs take to champion issues
facing the sustainability of the profession. With the pledge
comes a collection of turnkey communication assets to drive
consistent awareness to the profession's issues and ways for
individuals to get involved at a grass roots level.
Inspiration: Designer's Accord
A national resource available to BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and
people of color) nurses offering relevant coaching, therapy,
mentorship, and professional development services to overcome
systemic barriers preventing advancement.
Potential partner(s): Opportunity Network (OppNet)
An online/mobile career navigation platform for current and
future nurses to chart personalized paths in nursing,
including non-traditional community-based roles (e.g. school
nurse). Platform provides an interactive self-guided /
self-reported digital tool for student, working, and
experienced nurses to chart possible career pathways through
achievable professional milestones. The platform could be AI
driven by relevant local/national industry and association
data to help generate different pathways.
Possible partner(s): NVIDIA, Creative agency, Everynurse.org,
Nurse.org
A third-party agency or non-profit that works with nursing
students and nurses in the field to navigate and develop
detailed career paths for the bedside and beyond with
attention to the additional education and certifications that
might be needed. Consider creating a platform that can employ
veteran nurses who are willing to take on new/aspiring nurses
as individual gigs (gig economy).
Potential partner(s): NursingCareerCoaching.Com
A national nurse career transition clearing house that helps
licensed nurses simplify the eligibility requirements to find
and shift into different roles across the healthcare
continuum, specifically enabling them to discover
community-based opportunities (including schools, primary
care, assisted living, etc.).
Potential partner(s): Public health departments, Public
healthcare organizations, Academic medical centers
A regional/local fund (pool of capital from different sources)
that compensates nurses who stay in their communities by
paying them (directly) the difference between their hourly
rate and the hourly rate of travel nurses working in their
community.
Potential partner(s): Other philanthropies and foundations
A state or county-based calculator that can estimate the
earning potential (and pay-back period for debt incurred) of
nurses or allied health workers with any set of
licenses/certifications. Consider a dynamic database to base
results on the most recently available compensation (and
tuition/training cost) data.
Potential partner(s): Public health departments, Academic
medical research centers, Community colleges,
Licenses/certification entities
A multi-institution initiative that supports qualified
investigators to study, map, and publish a unified reference
for the ways in which nurses add value to health outcomes in
the hospital (in-patient) setting. The findings aim to
identify and define for CMS and other payers direct code-able
activities that the nursing profession can bill for in today's
fee-for-service (FFS) model.
Potential partner(s): Center for Medicare and Medicaid
Innovation (CMMI), Academic medical center(s)
A nationally recognized standard that establishes a nurse's
mastery level based on specific and verifiable experiences,
milestones and achievements. Consider developing this with
historical references along with modern interpretations from
leading nurse associations and willing healthcare
organizations to gain broad buy-in from nursing community.
Potential partner: Creative agency, Nursing school(s),
Acrediting associations
A gig economy-based platform that organizes the pool of
qualified nurse trainers/preceptors and makes them accessible
to healthcare organizations, with special attention to
underserved communities, that need instructors on a temporary
or long-term basis to advance their internal nurse development
programs.
Inspiration: Uber
Potential partner(s): Tech start-up team, Associations,
Academic Nursing Programs
A multi-stakeholder initiative to research, develop and test
new nursing models in healthcare. Consider initiatives to that
develop nursing models which involve service development and
evidence gathering to support direct care reimbursement.
Potential partner(s): Center for Medicare and Medicaid
Innovation, American Nurses Foundation
A national standard that introduces a unique nurse code to be
used within Electronic Medical/Health Records and their
associated coding structures (e.g., ICD10) that
identify/assign work performed by nurses to the patient log of
services performed.
Potential partner(s): Existing organizations championing
policy in various states
A quasi-academic institute that researches and publishes (in
partner(s)hip with leading nursing schools) data, information,
and insights regarding the value/economic contribution of
nursing and the nursing workforce to inform and shape
healthcare policy and nurse education development. Consider
building a consortium of willing and interested researchers
across multiple academic centers
Potential partner(s): UFL, UCONN, Emory, UPENN, UTX
A field of research that looks into better understanding
workflow and clinical indicators that help identify and/or
estimate a nurse's contribution to a patient's quality of care
(e.g., scans, 5 rights, etc.). Consider the infrastructural
costs to conduct this research in acute-care environments.
Potential partner(s): Nursing school researc groups, Academic
medical centers
A national campaign to showcase and recognize remarkable
nurses across various spaces of healthcare based on a
crowd-sourced model from nurse peers and/or patients. Note:
This is to specifically develop nurse thought-leaders under
the age of 50 to counter the aging nursing workforce (50% is
older the 50, 20% older than 65).
Inspitation: Forbes 30 under 30
Potential partners: Media outlet(s), Self-pubish, Creaive
agency
A new professional track within graduate programs that focuses
on taking people with a BSN and developing them into Certified
Registered Nurse Public Health professionals (CRNPH).
Different than an MPH, the CRNPH establishes a nurse's unique
role in advancing public health department mandates.
Potential partner(s): Progressive Universities (e.g. Emory),
Certifying bodies
A new professional track within graduate programs that focuses
on taking people with a BSN and developing them into Certified
Registered Nurse Quality Improvement professionals (CRNQI).
The CRNQI expands the nurse's influence and relevance/value of
nascent workforce research within healthcare QI departments
and regulatory bodies.
Potential partner(s): Progressive Universities (e.g. Emory),
Certifying bodies
A short, intensive advanced practice school that teaches elite
nurses in their region state of the art tactics, processes,
and techniques in their care delivery field. Consider this an
invitation only program where selected nurses have the
obligation to return to their healthcare organizations as
surrogate instructors for local teams.
Inspiration: Top Gun (Navy)
A pre-seed/seed investment fund that targets the development
of nurse-led start-ups addressing the professional and
clinical development challenges facing nurses across all
healthcare applications and venues.
Potential partner(s): Family Office(s), Cura Health Fund
A nation-wide platform with the goal of helping nurses improve
their intercultural relations, awareness, and competence with
different types of underserved communities (with regard to
both patient and health worker populations) by temporarily
exchanging comparable registered nurses from different types
of healthcare venues/organizations (e.g. Hospital to FQHC,
FQHC - Schools, etc.)
Inspiration: Fulbright Scholars program
Potential partner(s): Local healthcare networks (Hospitals,
FQHCs/CHCs, Primary care centers)
A virtual mentoring and training platform that works with
retired/veteran nurses to offer working nurses relevant
clinical and operational car delivery content that allows for
individual follow up through on-line community.
Potential partner(s): Mastrclass, Maven, Community College
Facilities
An online/mobile platform providing nurses with AI-based
training that is competency and skill based. Consider
supporting training with published case studies and a "how-to"
query engine to support nurses in real-time to tackle
difficult, complex, unexpected, or rare patient situations.
Potential partner(s): Nvidia, Health-tech start-up team
An online/mobile platform providing nurses and allied health
workers practical and relevant on-demand care delivery
training within virtual, merged, and/or augmented reality
environments at home or at work. Consider first focusing on
difficult or rare case studies that a student or working nurse
may not see from traditional course work.
Potential partner(s): Nvidia, IBM, Meta (Oculus), Emory
A field of study looking at the different ways unions can
advance workforce development beyond constructing oppositional
arguments regarding pay and working conditions.
Potential partner(s): Local Union, Academic Research Group
A national campaign/movement to rebrand nurses with a fresh
and modern take on who nurses are, what they do, and how
important they are to our communities. The campaign/movement
will develop and introduce a ubiquitous badge (to be worn by
nurses) that help build the public's ability to identify them
amid an ocean of health workers.
Inspiration: Livestrong, Survivorship and Yellow Rubber bands
Potential partner(s): Creative agency (e.g., Wieden & Kennedy),
Association(s), Union(s), Nursing School(s), Spokeperson(s)
A national award that identifies promising young nurse leaders
and provides them a years worth of foundational training in
organizational management and design practices in healthcare
to help them become positive internal change agents at their
place of employment. Each awardee is placed into a year-long
cohort that meets in-person four times in addition to the
remote classwork so they can develop a lifelong professional
peer network.
Potential partner(s): Highly Ranked Business and Nursing
Schools (e.g. Johns Hopkins, Vanderbilt, Emory, UPENN)
A field of study looking to advance our understanding of the
link between the diversity of health workers in care delivery
and the health outcomes of the patients they serve. Consider
bringing together leading academic research organizations on
this subject and creative agencies to develop more compelling
ways to socialize findings to audiences beyond academia.
Potental partner(s): Nursing schools, Academic medical
Centers, CMMI, Other foundations (RJF, J&J)
A field of study that looks at surveying existing nurse-led
activities (e.g., spiking a bag) driving patient care outcomes
across care delivery (from training to advance practice) to
convey/evince the value of nurse health production to payers.
Caution, this research should not reduce the value of nurses
to the tasks they perform.
Potential partner(s): Academic medical center and their
network of hospital organizations.
A turnkey resource to help nurses organize live, in-person
forums to share clinical expertise and experiences, nursing
best practices and other topics of interest that help an
interdisciplinary team of care providers improve patient
outcomes and enhance the patient experience. Consider
developing the infrastructure needed to record and archive
sessions for any staff to access asynchronously and share
beyond their facility.
Potential partner(s): Stanford Medicine's Nursing Ground
Rounds Model
A set of prescribable, billable behavioral and literacy-based
interventions that registered nurses can issue in primary
health care settings that do not violate their scope of
practice guidelines under their license.
Potential partner(s): Public health departments,
Accredited/Licensing associations
A field of study working to identify and measure the harm done
by existing nursing conditions and culture on nurses
themselves, exploring the topic of nurse moral injury (and
trauma) in healthcare today.
Potential partner(s): Department of Veterans Affairs (VA),
Nursing school(s), Medical School(s), Academic medical centers
A digital platform that expands the reach and work product of
nurse and allied health professionals in high-demand and/or in
specialized fields where access to them is difficult and
presents barriers to underserved communities. Consider Care
Plan RNs, Fetal Echo Sonographers, Cancer Navigators, Lacation
Consultants, etc.
Potential partner(s): We Are Here, Telescan, Iris Plans
A field of study looking to identify and measure the ways in
which nurse and allied health worker shortages impact the
ability for various healthcare environments (e.g., ambulatory,
inpatient, etc.) to adhere to state and federal regulations
(e.g., HIPAA) protecting patient safety and quality of care.
Potential partner(s): UPENN Nursing Research Program
A year-long fellowship that includes admission(s) and travel
expenses to select national nurse/health-related conferences
for 100 nurses across the country. Consider recruiting from
the applicant pool, cohort leaders that are interested in
organizing Fellows throughout the year to show up at events as
a unified body (in appearance and voice) and build a
professional network/community that lasts beyond the program
period.
Potential partner(s): Conferences, Associations
A select group of nurses from across the country (who are
demonstrably leading voices for change and/or evolving the
field of nursing in proven/meaningful ways) chosen to extend
the reach of the Foundation into their local networks and
communities. Each agent is assigned a discretionary budget to
provide local support for ad hoc initiatives, programs, and
even other individuals working on change/advancement.
Inspiration: Wonka's Golden Ticket
A national directory made up of all the various nursing
initiatives in the country that seeks to build the awareness
and transparency needed to foster cooperation among groups and
individuals working on the same thing to increase the pace of
development. This searchable and configurable directory
provides brokerage services to allow individuals or groups to
come together, share, be recognized, and mutually benefit from
their collective work.
Inspiration: Pitch Book, MLS (Multiple Listing Services) in
Real estate
A research and development group looking at the intersection
between established/emerging nurse workflows and clinical
protocols across all care settings and the rapid advancements
in artificial intelligence, robotics, and automation. This is
a future-facing group that is helping (re)imagine what the
modernization of care amid the ethical and societal concerns
of smart technology.
Inspiration: MIT Media Lab
A set of legal, business, and other entity forming assets that
are packaged as a starter kit for a group of nurses to
organize into nursing cooperatives. Based on mutual company
models, these cooperatives would allow nurses to retain the
benefits of the staffing agency/placement function and support
nurse career development while sharing in the ownership and
profits of the entity.
Inspiration: AlliedUP
A formal national organization that provides the
administrative support for local nurse communities to host and
archive nursing skill exchanges. These craft exchanges could
be hosted at/by local education centers to use their
simulation and teaching facilities and showcase a rotation of
new/veteran nurses to present "know-hows" - skills learned on
the job.
Potential partner(s): Libraries, Post-secondary Education
centers, Aassociations, Unions
An online/mobile platform providing nurses and allied health
workers peer-to-peer community support, mentor matching, and
one place to store and share professional history (including
all licenses/credentials). Consider incorporating
lessons/wisdom from veteran nurses who have recently retired.
Potentia partner: Health-tech start-up team, NAMI
A community organization that is located in the heart of an
undeserved neighborhood that provides a physical space and
resources (i.e., computers, wifi, career counseling, reference
books, etc.) for working and aspiring allied health workers to
do their work (shared working office space) or gain
foundational training either online or in person so they
remain close to their communities.
Inspiration: WeWork, Armed Forces Recruiting Centers, Futuro
Health
A community health model where people can access and book time
with registered nurses stationed at local libraries to develop
care plans, increase their literacy around a condition,
identify prevention and wellness solutions, and help anchor
and build a community to combat isolation and
disenfranchisement. Consider the need to modernize the
physical library space required for nurses to interact with
patients.
Potential partner(s): A Public Library System
A partner(s)hip with an existing nursing summit with the aim
to call attention and programing to nurse workforce
development.
Potential partner(s): SXSW, HIMSS, Aspen Institute
A professional organization that exists to educate and empower
Nurses to discover, invent, and pioneer products, processes,
services, and platforms, to revolutionize healthcare delivery.
Potential partner(s): Society of Nurse Scientists, Innovators,
Entrepreneurs and Leaders (SONSIEL), Network for Excellence in
Health Innovation (NEHI)
A partner(s)hip with a large conference promoter to organize a
dedicated track and agenda to give voice to the issues,
advancements, and opportunities for nurses and the nursing
profession that are central to the foundation's interest.
Potential partner(s): SXSW, CES, ASPEN INST., HIMSS,
Healthcare Innovation Congress, MedTech, MGMA, HCSRN, IMSH
A venture studio focused on activating nurse-entrepreneurs who
see a problem worth solving in healthcare and/or the nursing
profession with financing, operational and legal resources,
infrastructure, and development processes to help them build
new companies.
Potential partner(s): Design Run
An accelerator focused on supporting nurse-entrepreneurs who
have founded revenue generating companies that are looking to
expand their team's current capability with specific business
functions: marketing, sales, design, technology, operations,
legal, etc. to scale their product or service. Consider
developing an ecosystem of healthcare advisors and with other
foundations to pool greater sources of capital for investment.
Potential partner(s): SONSEIL, National Nurse Business
Association (NNBA), Healthcare and health-tech
investors/operators
An incubator focused on supporting nurse-entrepreneurs who
have founded their own start-up with a community of advisors,
funders, and technologist invested in nurturing nascent
companies to the next stage of growth.
Potential partner(s): SONSEIL, National Nurse Business
Association (NNBA), Healthcare and health-tech
investors/operators
Using public funding, a research agency of the United States
Department of Health and Human Services responsible for the
development of emerging technologies for use by healthcare's
most prolific workforce-nurses.
Inspiration: DARPA
A national resource that helps qualified nurses establish a
business plan and apply for seed funding to build independent
small-to-medium size businesses (SMB) in care delivery (e.g.,
maternal health lactation consultants, women's health/beauty,
occupational therapists, etc.).
Potential partner(s): Local Chambers of Commerce, Business
School(s)
A collaboration with Center for Medicare and Medicaid
Innovation (CMMI) to provide matching funds for pilots/models
looking to advance novel nurse and allied health workforce
development solutions (e.g., training) or evolve payment
models that recognize a nurse's role in the production of
health.
Potential partner(s): CMMI
A new agile care model that serves rural and underserved
communities with a nurse-anchored care model located
(temporarily or permanently) within discount shopping centers
with expanded hours of operation to provide health services
covering prevention, remote monitoring, nutrition, wellness,
mental health, and condition specific care planning. Consider
advancing policy that pushes the scope of practice for nurses
to bring a greater array of clinical and therapeutic
interventions.
Inspiration: Pediatric urgent care centers (South Florida)
Potential partner(s): Dollar General (w/CMO), Dollar Tree,
Family Dollar
A new integrated practice unit (IPU) led by a registered nurse
that contracts with payers (MCOs, CMS, SIEs) to get reimbursed
for condition management and improved outcomes for a
neighborhood or zip code. Model encourages all clinicians to
practice at the top of their license and seek to pay team
members for the value they add.
Inspriation: Dell Med MSK Institute
Potential partner(s): Alameda Health Consortium (Oakland, CA)
A national competition for $10M dollar prizes focused on
bringing awareness and solutions to large scale challenges
impacting nursing. Consider establishing an advisory council
to identify and define large scale prize-worthy problems.
Inspiration: X-Prize
A virtual care platform giving people around the clock access
to registered nurses who can help address a variety of
non-urgent concerns ranging from taking the time to unpack
care plans, answer condition specific questions, address
prevention alternatives, surface medication trade-offs or
conflicts, and offer well vetted referrals to clinicans and
other providers.
Potential partner(s): Health-tech start-up team,
Walgreens/CVS, FQHCs
A think-tank that organizes existing nurse economists across
the country to help set the national agenda on nurse workforce
development. The foundation would also sponsor scholarships
promoting further expansion of nurse economists and research
to calculate and model the value of the nursing workforce
throughout healthcare in America.
Potential partner: Florida Center for Nursing
A national directory that does the work to identify promising
BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) nurses across the
country who will or have already achieved a set of milestones
in their career that qualify them for nurse leadership
positions at public, private, and non-profit healthcare
institutions that have a stated interest in addressing issues
of systemic racism in employment.
Potential partner(s): BIPOC- based Nursing Associations,
Influencer Networks
A significant grant/gift ($1M) awarded to outstanding
achievement in nursing. Focuses on highlighting significant
and relevant contributions in nursing innovation at the
intersection of clinical practice and educational leadership.
Inspiration: MacArthur Fellowships
A field of service design development aimed to redesign the
workflows that deliver care (condition-based and outcome
focused) that honor a nurse's perspective and capacity to
produce care for patients across their healthcare journey.
Potential partner(s): Academic medical center, CMMI or related
state/federal government innovation group, Network for
Excellence in Health Innovation (NEHI)
A strategic bet on one of the nurse associations with the
capability to consolidate/unify the other various associations
to become the unifying voice and central strategy making body.
Inspiration: SWATCH (formation history)
A contractual engagement to financially support prominent,
vetted nurses from across the country who have amassed
followers in excess of 100K through any of the social media
channels (TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, etc.). These
nurse influencers act to expand awareness of and
constructively advance the profession through strategic
alignment with the Foundation.
Inspiration: Nike Sponsored Athletes
A quasi-educational model focused on training nurses to become
effective Chief Nursing Officers. The model can be national or
hyper-local to meet the unique healthcare environments found
regionally and in each state.
Potential partner(s): CNO Academy (Joyce Batcheller)
A regional/national campaign to attract and financially
support nurses with 5-10 years of experience to obtain their
(Healthcare) MBA in order to gain the necessary business
skills that help nurses take part in executive roles that
determine the financial and organizational structures inside
healthcare venues.
Potential partner(s): Business School(s) (e.g., Executive MBA
programs)
A widely distributed podcast surfacing nurse and nursing
profession perspectives and insights on the issues,
challenges, and opportunities facing health and healthcare in
America.
Potential partner(s): See You Now (J&J)
An interactive and immersive website focused on showing the
different ways nurses are enlisted to deliver care throughout
the world (including: jobs, tasks, responsibilities, impact,
etc) to push on the assumptions and biases of what Americans
think nurses are capable of doing.
Potential partner(s): Creative agency, IBM
A national platform that provides day, week, or months long
micro-apprenticeships to give new and maturing nurses the
opportunity to gain deeper expertise in advanced nurse
practices or to help them explore other nurse roles and
activities in a variety of community settings. This could be
done in-person or remotely and could allow nurses to generate
additional income.
Inspiration: Gig-economy meets sharing-economy
Potential partner(s): WayUp
A reality-tv production that hosts entrepreneurial nurses to
pitch their innovation/start-up to a group of savvy and
experienced healthcare investors to both seed worthwhile ideas
and build public awareness for the needs nurses see in across
our healthcare systems.
Inspiration: Shark Tank
Potential partner(s): Netflix, Amazon, Hulu
A strategic initiative between four-year academic institutions
and neighboring two-year community colleges to identify,
transition, and develop outperforming BIPOC students (Black,
Indigenous, People of Color) from ASN to PhDs to generate more
diverse nurse faculty.
Potential partner(s): Emory University
A national campaign and associated messaging channel strategy
to build awareness around the hidden costs of nursing culture
and working as a nurse (e.g. 2X rates of suicide, depression,
poverty, failed relationships, etc.) focused on reaching
Millenials, Gen Z and newer generations.
Potential partner(s): Creative agency, Association(s)
A field of workforce development research looking to map the
movement of nurses to better understan where they go when they
leave the bedside and offer communities a true understanding
of the nursing capacity nation-wide.
Inspiration: Weather Forecasts/Tracking (NOAA)
Potential partner(s): NCSBN (RNs with active licenses
database)
A policy agenda that seeks to promote the ability for nurses
(and other clinicians) to prescribe a suite of billable
interventions (e.g. bedside compassion, food/nutrition,
hydration, recovery, supplements, etc.) that are all held
within a registered nurse's scope of practice.
Potential partner(s): Center for Medicare and Medicaid
Innovation (CMMI), Nurse Associations/Boards
A web-based immersive and descriptive interpretation for how
technology that exists today should be designed to enhance
(not distract or hinder) a nurse's workflow, productivity, and
quality of care. The design of this website showcases various
narrative form case studies, from EHR/EMR platforms like
Epic/Athena to medication dispensing systems like PYXISs.
Potential partner(s): Creative agency, Health-tech start-up
team, Nurse entreprenuers
An investigative reporting style documentary tackling any
number of topics impacting the nurse profession, from raising
awareness about their worth amid growing efforts to suppress
their value to the increases in workplace violence. Consider
putting out an RFP to film societies/networks or creating a
recurring film challenge at top film schools for students to
continuously push the narrative forward.
Inspiration: Frontline
Potential partner(s): Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, PBS
A large international exhibition that showcases future models
of nurse-led care delivery that are being envisioned/pursued
across different nations. The goal is to make room for
nurse-led perspectives to provoke broader thinking of possible
care experiences to influence everyday consumers, policy
makers/regulators and healthcare leaders/disruptors.
Potential partner(s): Nursing Associations around the world,
IBM
A national competition targeting thought-leaders in management
and business from sectors outside of healthcare to rethink,
through a more pragmatic and less academic approach, the
playbook on how to manage and develop nurses, CNAs, and other
allied health roles that are patient-facing. Consider open
sourcing content and showcasing winner(s) of the challenge at
healthcare conferences(keynote), podcast, book, etc.
Potential partner(s): Adam Grant
A policy agenda working to inform public officials on the
growing trends of hospital workplace violence and the need for
state or federal policy that ensures their safety within any
healthcare setting as a matter of public health.
Potental partner(s): Nursing schools, Academic medical
Centers, Other foundations (RJF, J&J)
A campaign to persuade systemic changes to state and federal
policy that addresses a registered and advanced nurse's
practice through evidence-based research around quality,
safety, engagement, and cost.
Consider building on data produced by the pandemic's recent,
temporary lift on rules governing a nurse's scope of practice
as well as showcasing specific areas of care delivery where
nurses should be given greater autonomy.
Potential partner(s): Existing efforts led by various
associations and other policy organizations/think tanks
A video-based communication to tell the story of what nursing
and healthcare might look like if produced from a
nurse-centric view in 2050. Consider recruiting a panel of
future-facing nurses to work with a futurist and film maker to
tell the story.
Potential partner(s): Futurist(s), Creative agency, Panel of
Nurse Leaders
A policy agenda to push, on a state by state basis, for
greater flexibility from regulatory bodies to open nurse
enrollment capacity for the various types of educations tracks
(Diploma, ASN, BSN). Consider focusing on states where there's
a good chance this type of policy advocacy can have an impact.
Potential partner(s): Existing organizations and programs
working on this policy.