Public Health

The COVID Vaccine Facts for Nurses campaign, led by the American Nurses Association in partnership with 22 other leading nursing organizations and sponsored by Johnson & Johnson, has reached and supported nurses with culturally relevant, critical information and expert perspectives about the safety, efficacy and importance of vaccines.

A crucial takeaway from the Accelerating Nursing, Transforming Healthcare report was the mental health strain nurses experience and methods of reducing it. From trauma-informed group sessions to songwriting, check out the innovative strategies supporting nurses’ mental health and reducing stigmas.

These stories are just a small snapshot of the many ways in which nurses are innovating and leading to improve care delivery in communities. Johnson & Johnson is committed to advocating for, elevating and empowering nurses as they transform healthcare and change human health for the better.

For nearly 30 years, nursing, pharmacy, physical therapy and dentistry students and more have taken healthcare to their surrounding community, perhaps where it’s needed most. The Farmworker Family Health Program, launched by a nurse leader at Georgia State in 1993, and carried on by Emory University in 2001, provides various students an opportunity to offer basic care for the underserved migrant farmworkers of Colquitt, Cook, Brooks, and Tift counties in southwest, GA. Learn about its inception and how it grew to a nurse-led, community-focused effort.

Johnson & Johnson, together with the American Association of Nurse Practitioners and the Association of Public Health Nurses proudly announce the Johnson & Johnson Nurses Innovate QuickFire Challenge: Improving Access to Care. This challenge looks to nurses to create potential solutions that aim to improve quality and access to equitable care and ultimately help prevent, intercept or treat disease.

Across the country, registered nurses (RNs) play a critical role in the medical preparedness and response to natural disasters of all kinds, working to safeguard the health and wellbeing of the at-risk public. Nurses are uniquely qualified to manage emergency situations — which can come at a cost to themselves and their families.

Through bravery, compassion, and ingenuity, front line health workers, including nurses, increase access to essential care for millions of people every day. Despite the long strides made in recent years to help recruit, educate, and foster leadership, there are still not enough front line health workers. Additionally, those that exist are in need of more training and resources, while communities around the world continue to suffer from a lack of access to essential health services.

As the healthcare system in the United States continues to evolve, nurses are continuing to play a larger role in providing comprehensive healthcare to patients in vulnerable areas. Not only are organizations like Family Practice and Counseling Network (FPCN) working to make care available to those in low-income and underserved communities, they’re also working to ensure that care takes into consideration a patient’s complete wellness and gives them access to knowledgeable experts so they can thrive.

Marcus Henderson, BSN, and Ian McCurry, BSN, RN, are co-founders and chief operations officers of Up and Running Healthcare Solutions, which was born from a project they developed while in nursing school to address health disparities facing homeless people in Philadelphia, Penn. We recently spoke to them about their initiative, and how nurses and small interventions can make a big difference in addressing health disparities faced by homeless populations.

While seasonal influenza (flu) viruses can be detected year-round in the United States, flu viruses are most common during the fall and winter. The flu is serious and can even be deadly, but it’s also preventable — and the flu vaccine has been shown to be one of the best ways to protect against the flu.

Nurses have a long history of supporting disaster relief efforts through the American Red Cross. In the past six weeks, the Red Cross has launched a wide-ranging relief effort to help people devastated by three historic, back-to-back hurricanes—Harvey, Irma, and Maria.

Outbreaks of infectious disease are no longer contained to a single community. Recent outbreaks of Ebola, influenza and Zika demonstrate that the risk of a global pandemic is a reality with which healthcare workers across the world must contend.

In 1990, the prevalence of obesity in the United States was less than 15 percent of the nation’s population, according to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Current data from the CDC and The Journal of American Medicine (JAMA)report that more than one-third of (34.9 percent or 78.6 million) adults in the U.S. are obese.