The Pennsylvania Action Coalition wishes you a meaningful Black History Month! We celebrate and honor Black voices who have shaped healthcare and are creating a healthier future for us all. We have compiled a list of resources from across our programs that spotlight Black nurses, healthcare leaders, and advocates, and that are focusing on providing culturally humble care to multifaceted Black communities.
Pennsylvania’s Healthcare Mosaic Conference, co-hosted by the PA-AC’s Nursing Diversity Council, is a biannual conference that gathers health and social service providers to share ideas surrounding health equity, diversity, inclusivity, culturally humble care, and cultural humility. Although each year has its own theme, the Pennsylvania Healthcare Mosaic Conference seeks to open dialogue about health disparities, often created by the social determinants of health, and how they affect population health and the healthcare environment.
Keynote Speakers of past conferences include:
Sheldon D. Fields, PhD, RN, CRNP, FNP-BC, AACRN, FAANP, FNAP, FAAN
Associate Dean for Equity & Inclusion, Penn State University
Roberta Waite, EdD, MSN, PMHCNS, ANEF, FAAN
Professor, College of Nursing and Health Professions
Associate Dean for Community-Centered Health & Wellness and Academic Integration,
Drexel University
Rear Admiral (retired) Sylvia Trent-Adams, PhD, RN, FAAN
Former Deputy Surgeon General, U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS)
Senior Vice President & Chief Strategy Officer, University of North Texas Health Science Center
At the Core of Care highlights the creative efforts of nurses and other partners to transform the health of their patients, families, and communities that they serve. The series focuses on health care needs through a consumer lens with each episode highlighting the complexity of factors that empower patients to live a healthy life. Episodes follow nurses and their partners as they advocate for the well-being of their patients and communities to discuss themes of health equity, health promotion, and zooms in on a specific barrier or group of barriers to care.
Social Justice in Nursing: We speak to Andre' Bennett, a graduate from Lincoln University, who shares his outlook on what's happening in our country, the need for social justice, and how that relates to his interest in mental health nursing. He reiterates that nurses are advocates that can make meaningful change not only with COVID-19, but with the way the country is dealing with racism. Andre' also shares how COVID-19 is affecting new grads and scheduling for the NCLEX exam.
Expansion of Community-Based Interventions for HCV: We focus on community-based hepatitis interventions for the Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) and learn more about one of Philadelphia’s efforts where nurses and patient navigators collaborate to test and treat HCV. Bibbi Stokes, an Infectious Diseases Nurse Manager and experienced Population Health Manager at Public Health Management Corporation touches on the game changers within HCV treatment, including the switch to an all-oral antiviral treatment allowing for more community-based HCV treatment.
Vaccine Confidence: Nurses Turn Skepticism Into Action: We talk with local nurses Monica Harmon and Maria Mazzocchi about their decision-making process about why they decided to get vaccinated, including their initial hesitation. They also outline the steps nurses can take to become a vaccine ambassador.
Vaccine Hesitancy: Is Healthcare Listening?: We hear from nurses across the country sharing their experiences with vaccine rollout and vaccine hesitancy in the communities they serve. In this episode, we start in Boston, Massachusetts, and move to east-central Kansas, and talk with nurses, Dr. Deborah Washington and Ashley Beying.
Vaccine Confidence: Community Partnerships & Accessibility: We speak to three nurse practitioners based in Topeka, Kansas, and Milford, Massachusetts, about the role of community partnerships and vaccine distribution and addressing vaccine accessibility issues facing their patients, many of whom are new immigrants.
Vaccine Confidence: Building Trust: We discuss behavioral techniques nurses are adopting at this time to build confidence in COVID-19 vaccines and how trust and empathy are crucial to the process. Our conversation begins with nurses Dr. Stephen Perez and Jasmine Nakayama from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and concludes with Dr. Gloria Jones, a family nurse practitioner in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Moving the Needle on Nurse Practitioner Education and Training: We spend time with Dr. Barbara Todd to discuss the role of mentorship and education in nurse practitioner training. Dr. Todd shares her personal clinical and teaching experience and emphasizes the importance of diversity in the workforce to support nurse practitioners who work in underserved communities.
Cultivating Support, Resilience and Retention for the Health Professions: We speak with Dr. Paula Milone-Nuzzo about the current workforce crisis in health care. Discussing the continued need to reframe training and education for health professions, we explore potential solutions that could help cultivate more support, resilience and retention.
The PA-AC Cohort of Exchanged Learning (PA-ACCEL) Mentorship Program is a mentorship program created by the Pennsylvania Action Coalition’s Nurse Diversity Council (PA-NDC) in partnership with Lincoln University's Department of Nursing. The objective of the mentorship program is to bolster the nursing students’ capacity to be successful both in nursing school and in their transition to professional nursing practice. Mentoring provides lifelong learning and professional resilience to students and is proven to increase student retention, the success rate on NCLEX, an increased sense of socialization into the nursing profession, enhanced self-esteem, and decreased anxiety and stress.
For more information about the PA-ACCEL Mentorship Program and resources available for students, please click here.
