Truth proposes list of nurses for inclusion on Biden-Harris coronavirus task force
On November 22, 2020, the Truth About Nursing sent the Covid task force a message with a diverse list of nurses. The list included direct care nurses, as well as nurses who are expert in infection control, health disparities, and other public health disciplines. We hope our message will increase understanding of nursing. While we can’t guarantee nurses will be added to the task force, we are hopeful, and we thank you for your recommendations!
November 22, 2020 – Today the Truth About Nursing proposed a list of nurse experts for potential inclusion on the Biden-Harris coronavirus task force to the Truth’s contact on the current 13-member advisory panel. Our contact agreed to work with us as a result of our letter-writing campaign, which gathered more than 750 signatures. We thank the many nurses and organizations who supported that effort and recommended nurse experts for our list. We created the list based mainly on those recommendations, as well as on our advocacy work and Truth director Sandy Summers’s clinical experience providing ICU and other care to Covid-19 patients. Supporters proposed so many highly qualified nurses that narrowing the list was very difficult, and we were only able to include about a small number of the total nominees on the final list we submitted. Even so, the list was extensive. We proposed more than 20 nurses for the current task force, and 6 more who are currently in government and might be added after Inauguration Day. In our transmittal message, we explained how each nurse would aid the task force, including through their expertise in infection control; health care disparities; clinical nursing environments; occupational health; rural health; mental health; palliative care; pain management; school nursing; vaccine hesitancy and health literacy; and ethical issues in the allocation of health resources. We included direct care nurses and their advocates. And half of those we proposed were Black, Indigenous, or Persons of Color. The Truth undertook this campaign not just to address Covid-19, but also to advance our mission to increase understanding of nursing among high-level decision-makers and the public. We hope our message to the task force, including the list of nurse experts, shows the importance and wide range of nursing practice. Finally, we should stress that we have no guarantee that any nurses will be added to the panel. But we are hopeful, and we will let you know if we hear more. Thank you for your help!
See our letter to the Covid advisory panel here.
I agree that Nursing had been overlooked. It doesn’t make sense given there was a nurse, Dr. Deborah Mayer, (UNC- Chapel Hill) on his Cancer Moonshot initiative. It makes me sad; however, I have hope he will see the error and correct it.