Nurses Are Key in Achieving Health Equity

The keynote address at the recent Nurse Practitioners in Women’s Health annual conference, given by Rear Admiral Susan Orsega, MSN, director of the Commissioned Corps Headquarters of the U.S. Public Health Service, focused on the role that women’s health nurse practitioners played in the COVID-19 pandemic, and identified the skills needed to better address women’s health through practice and policy strategies focused on healthcare across all populations.

In this video, Orsega describes the role that nurses can play in helping families and communities find solutions to healthcare disparities.

Following is a transcript of her remarks:

It’s our societal and really our social obligation to provide these solutions focused on equity, access, and pathways and support across all the populations. And so when I think of nursing and for healthcare, the solutions are really in our professional parachute. And I believe that it is our tools in this parachute that will allow us to work across all of these settings.

And it’s not just the stethoscope or the electronic programs and our iPhone or our books that we refer to, but it’s leveraging that set of core leadership skills that allows us to turn that dial towards a healthier nation that’s driven by care for all, with that backdrop of really being COVID right in our mind.

And so my unique experiences working in African countries and disasters has really led to my belief that you need these leadership skills to work in challenging and complex healthcare environments, working with vulnerable populations, whether it’s domestically or globally, and daily or even during disasters.

And so our nursing leadership skills, and really quite frankly, any healthcare professional, needs to be in our ability to work collectively across all the professions and across the world to solve these clinical and scientific and community challenges.

So I’d like to name a few examples. The National University Nurse Managed Clinic is just one example of a trusted care provider in Los Angeles. It actually represents a robust framework and is a model built upon trust of some of the most local level of healthcare system communities. We need more of these nurse-led clinics, clinics across the country.

And the second is really, I think, about community leaders. And we know that in many urban areas where the sidewalks are unkempt or crumbling, and kids and adults don’t get out to walk. They’re sitting at home. And that’s very therapeutic for us to get out and walk now when you think of COVID. And healthcare professionals are present at community housing boards, influencing that importance of walkable communities. But we need nurses at these community boards.

And all of us need to work across all of these sectors that are non-traditional — government city planners, community organizations with educators, religious organizations, and other individuals to work together in this fabric of addressing chronic diseases and poor health habits, and really the rising unhealthy behaviors that we know are leading America down this path of a reduced quality of life. I mean, these are small but really powerful inroads that will drive us towards a healthier nation.

And the next one is really collaborating, and when I think of the role of the United States Public Health Service collaborating on the front lines of COVID-19, it just can’t be underscored enough. So many examples, but a lot of times when you’re out and responding, you may not have all those tools in your organization. But you know you have these other tools in your parachute within your profession and with others who have shared goals.

So it was really a phone call that I made to Dr. Eileen Sullivan-Marx at NYU, when the corps needed nurses to receive real-time training, if you can imagine, for the use of ventilators. I mean, that was just one of those absolute real-time moments. And so we have facilitators and representatives of public health initiatives, and we, all of us have this culture of care that we have to be able to connect with each other. And we have to have the ability to connect with government programs and initiatives with community. And that’s really what the Public Health Service does, is that in the uniform, that public health asset, which was unique among all the services and the government.

You know, more people should join the corps. I’m obviously biased, but the Cares Act has provided funding to the United States Department of Health and Human Services for the ready reserve, which is our uniform service reserve component. And the intent is we restructured this component to build out reserve units similar to other uniformed services. So that, if you can imagine right now, the Reserve Corps provides additional trained, ready personnel of teams who could go out on short notice to fill those critical public health needs and be called up.

Nurses are by far the highest in demand right now, when we deploy for disasters or public health crises, and this is not going to change at any point in the future of Public Health Service nursing, or really any one of us within the profession.