Program Agenda

Welcome Day 2 and Plenary Session

Can Nurses Fix What the World Is Breaking: An Examination of the Political Determinants of Health 

Speaker: Daniel E. Dawes, Founding Dean, School of Global Health, SVP, Global Health, Meharry Medical College

As global citizens committed to achieving health equity, it is important to expand the boundaries of our knowledge relative to the determinants and drivers of health. Effectively eliminating health disparities requires a holistic approach. It requires understanding the root causes of these problems, the structural barriers to health and life, and how historical and contemporary health disparities are connected. ...

This presentation is about why the most powerful prescription in America is not written by a clinician — it's written by a politician. From the mid-1800s – Rudolf Virchow – the German physician who, after investigating a typhus epidemic, famously concluded that medicine is a social science, and politics is nothing else but medicine on a large scale. He was not speaking metaphorically. He was being precise. Health is deeply connected to social conditions and political action is necessary to address the root causes of disease, including poverty and inequality in communities across the United States and the world. In 2020, we saw this clearly when the COVID-19 pandemic tore through this country and landed hardest on the communities that political decisions made decades earlier had already left most vulnerable. We watched the same debates about who deserves care, who counts in a census, whose neighborhood gets resources and whose neighborhood gets a highway play out in real time with real consequences.

It has been over two decades since the National Academy of Medicine released its groundbreaking report, Unequal Treatment, which highlighted striking disparities in health status and care, and over twenty-five years since Surgeon General David Satcher, MD, PhD, issued several reports calling for the elimination as opposed to reduction, of health disparities. Yet today we have realized limited success in developing effective interventions at multiple levels to advance population health.

As we strive to realize a healthier society and move forward with transforming our health systems to become more equitable and inclusive, nurse educators and leaders must understand how the social and political determinants of health have worked overtime in the United States and the current and future trends that will hinder or advance population health.

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Closing Plenary

Speaker: Paulette Granberry Russell, President, National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education

Gain new insights into the tension between the current challenges facing higher education and “promises” made to increase access to nursing and advance the health of all populations in this country and globally. The presenter will discuss how state-level efforts and federal approaches to dismantling strategies that promote access, connection, and engagement for all populations have led to incremental progress over the last 60 years. Legislative actions, public criticism, and political rhetoric have created an atmosphere of uncertainty in higher education and other sectors. Navigating these challenges requires leading with courage, building coalitions across sectors, advocating for legal strategies where appropriate, and implementing sustainable changes in systems that have resulted in imbalances within and between populations.