In this special edition of SEE YOU NOW, we’re honoring the national Juneteenth holiday. As a podcast focused on how nurse-led innovation is strengthening our healthcare systems and transforming lives, we’re marking Juneteenth with a health equity playlist to amplify and elevate the scholarship, innovation, leadership, and contributions of Black nurses toward building healthier communities, families, and experiences. While meaningful progress has been made in reducing health disparities, there remains so much more to do in our race toward health equity. We invite and urge you to listen, learn from, follow, engage, elevate, and cite Black nurses and their courageous and groundbreaking work and contributions to moving health equity forward. In this episode, you’ll hear a sampling of nurses who are innovating on the front lines of health equity. Click here to enjoy our full Juneteenth playlist. To learn more, visit our website at www.seeyounowpodcast.com or contact us at [email protected].

Father's Day, observed in 100+ countries and in America on the third Sunday in June, celebrates and honors fatherhood and paternal bonds, as well as the influence of fathers in society. Fathers play a unique role in their children’s lives and development, and plenty of research backs up the importance of a father's presence. But when it comes to preparing for parenthood, the focus is heavily skewed to preparing mothers for motherhood. So how are fathers getting the support and training they need to be successful -- especially in this age of pandemic parenting? And how does this all come together with the additional challenge of being a father who isn’t living with their children? It's not easy. In this episode, we learn how nurse scientist and researcher Wrenetha Julion, PhD, MPH, RN, FAAN, CNL is innovating to build and bolster the involvement of African American fathers who live apart from their children through the Building Bridges to Fatherhood Program and through an exciting new Father Inclusive Prenatal Care program.

To learn more, visit our website at www.seeyounowpodcast.com or contact us at [email protected]

In celebration of Pride Month, we’re returning to an earlier episode highlighting nurse practitioner and healthcare activist Dallas Ducar (she/her/hers), the CEO of Transhealth Northampton. People of all gender and sexual identities need and deserve respectful, affirming healthcare, and the work of Dallas and her team is essential in expanding access – and improving quality of life – for all.

While the recent pandemic caused devastating loss of life and strained health systems, it also brought into sharp focus nurses’ pivotal role in healthcare and their enormous, and largely untapped potential to shape patient care, rethink how healthcare is organized and where it’s delivered. In this fourth of a multi-episode series centered on the Accelerating Nursing, Transforming Healthcare report we take a close up look at how the COVID-19 pandemic exposed disparities in access to care that landed far more heavily on vulnerable communities. This is especially true for the Transgender community which has been uniquely affected by the pandemic in terms of access to gender-affirming care. We spend time with Nurse Practitioner and healthcare activist Dallas Ducar (she/her/hers), the CEO of Transhealth Northampton, and learn how their ground-breaking comprehensive care clinic delivers gender-affirming care to gender-diverse adults, children, and families. In this work, Dallas describes the ripple and compounding effects of discrimination, the impact of legislation on telehealth, the role of community-based participatory action research, and the ways that nurse-led innovation can be the playbook for healthier, experiences, outcomes, workplaces, and affirming care for all of us.

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Stigma and stereotypes can hold us back. In every part of our lives – work, family, hobbies, friendships – how we think others see us often shapes how we see ourselves, even when our capabilities far surpass what they or we believe. Nurses, in particular, face many external, stereotyped expectations. Many people have firmly held beliefs about who nurses are, what they do, where they work, their skills and weaknesses, and even what they wear. But nurses know better – nurses are widely skilled, deeply experienced, and are represented across every demographic and in many different settings. They experience the full range of human emotion, too; the strength and compassion they are known for, but also the vulnerabilities and challenges that go unspoken.

Samantha Roecker, RN has a “track record” (pun intended) of breaking many barriers and stereotypes and her success in competitive running combined with her experience as a nurse drove her to combine her passions to raise awareness and drive change for nurses. Frustrated by the lack of mental health resources for nurses, specifically those specifically addressing healthcare trauma and the pandemic, she knew more could be done. Inspired by British nurse and marathon record holder, Jessica Anderson, Sam embarked on a bold goal – breaking the Guinness World Record for fastest marathon run in a nurse’s uniform, and raise thousands of dollars to support nurse mental health, in partnership with The American Nurse's Foundation, Moxie Scrubs and the 26.2 Foundation.

At the 2022 Boston Marathon, she did just that. In this episode, we talk with Samantha about the impact stigma has on nurses’ ability to reach their full potential, what really defines a nurse, the power of mental health support, and the surprising overlap between nursing and competitive running. 

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International Nurses Day is an important opportunity to check the pulse of nurses around the world, especially in 2022. Nurses have given their all in the response to pandemics, natural disasters, and in war zones, in leading mass COVID-19 testing and vaccination efforts, and in completely redesigning how and where care is delivered. The value of nurses has never been more clear. Nor could it be any clearer that not enough is being done to protect nurses and other health workers, tragically underscored by the more than 180,000 health worker deaths due to COVID-19 and the alarming increase of mental health conditions and concerns nurses report.  

COVID-19 has altered many nurses’ career plans – over the past two years, McKinsey & Company has found that worldwide, nurses consistently, and increasingly, report planning to leave the workforce at higher rates compared with the past decade. Those departures have profound implications for the health of citizens and systems everywhere. Indeed, the greatest threat to global health is the workforce shortage. 

As part of our Meeting of Minds series, we listen in as four McKinsey partners from their Healthcare Systems & Services practice discuss the results of a McKinsey & Company survey of frontline nurses across six countries including Brazil, France, Japan, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In this conversation we hear Gretchen Berlin, RN, Thomas London, MBA, Robin Roark, MD, MBA, and Senthu Arumugam, MBA explore the survey’s findings of why nurses are considering leaving their roles, what energizes them to keep going,  and how nurses around the world are eager to innovate and deliver care in different and better ways to solve what has become a consequential global problem.

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Observed during May, National Nurses Month is a call-to-attention, action, and dedicated to highlighting the impact nurses have on people, communities, nations, and the planet. Given that May is also Mental Health Awareness Month, this year we’re particularly mindful of the impact that healthcare has had on nurses; of the specific challenges and dangers nurses have encountered, endured, and continue to endure; and the need to express our appreciation for nurses in terms of bold, urgent, system-level action, support, and investment.

In this episode we learn how a health system’s leadership demonstrates their commitment to the wellbeing and flourishing of their team members; the rather unlikely story of nurses, singing, and stardom; and the surprising healing power of the arts. Special thanks to nurse and tenor singer Winnie Mele, RN, BSN, NE-BC, nurse and soprano singer Keshia Jaboin, RN, BSN , and Allison Lowenfeld from Northwell Health’s corporate marketing team for sharing their story, experience, and voices.

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The health of our planet is in serious condition. Climate change is anticipated to result in increasingly warmer global temperatures, more extreme weather events, and rising sea levels. Without accelerated intervention and broad scale innovation across all economic sectors, we face devastating effects on global water and food supplies, critical infrastructure and supply chains, physical and mental health, and a less certain future. Understanding the impacts of climate change on human health is vitally important for the global population. You can’t have healthy people without a healthy environment; something that health professionals today increasingly understand. Just as nurses are skilled at turning around a health crisis that humans can experience -- they’re also well trained and ideally positioned for addressing the critical condition of our planet. In this episode we meet Teddie Potter, PhD, RN, FAAN, Director of Planetary Health for the School of Nursing at the University of Minnesota and learn how nurses can and are reducing greenhouse emissions, find out why educating girls is key to a healthier planet, and discover who the best intergenerational storytellers are for helping us understand our relationship to and stewardship of the planet and where to innovate to improve its health.

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The transformation of primary care is unfolding across the US within a new era of primary care clinics that have embraced technology and data and the power to anticipate and automate many of the front, mid, and back-office operations that stitch together a truly delightful primary care experience. Yet this wave of building new, transformational tech-enabled primary care clinics didn’t include building solutions to support existing clinics -- many of which are Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC) located in under-resourced and rural communities and  serving those insured by the public health insurance program Medicaid. Nearly 85 million people, half of which are children, are enrolled in Medicaid, making it the single largest insurer in the United States.

In this episode, we meet nurse Cassie Choi and engineer Neil Batlivala, two mission-driven founders of the healthtech startup Pair Team, who built a remote, tech-enabled clinical team to provide virtual assistance and automation of clinical operations, care coordination, and outreach activities -- so onsite primary care teams can build trust and focus on what really matters: people, relationships, and health.

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For additional resources, visit our website at www.seeyounowpodcast.com

To celebrate Women’s History Month, we’re returning to an earlier episode to elevate the trailblazers of TODAY and ask what the preferred experience of health and design of health systems looks like when we center on the experiences and expertise of the women in nursing who lead the way.

According to a CDC report, during the first year of the pandemic in 2020, the number of women in the United States who died during pregnancy or shortly after giving birth increased sharply.

And while the pandemic has exacerbated it, the maternal mortality crisis was an issue long before COVID, one that disproportionately impacts Black women. U.S. maternal death is the highest in the developed world, and this preventable trend, despite our awareness, continues to worsen.

It's in this light that we return to one of our first, and timeless episodes, Empowering Childbirth and the story of nurse-midwife and maternal and child health pioneer, innovator, and activist Ruth Lubic.

Vigorous at 95, Lubic continues six decades of a movement to improve health, experiences, and outcomes for mothers, children and families. At its core, her work, innovation, and commitment is to address health inequities and ensure the safety and dignity of everyone who gives birth.

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The delivery of commercial COVID-19 vaccines in less than a year is nothing short of miraculous and was made possible by Operation Warp Speed -- a historic public-private partnership initiated and coordinated by the United States government. While other medical moonshots and breakthroughs have been achieved, few have occurred with the speed and success of developing the COVID-19 vaccines.

December 14, 2020 -- just seven months after announcing Operation Warp Speed -- was the first day the COVID-19 vaccines were administered in the US and those on the frontlines of health care were among the first in this historic and unprecedented mass vaccination effort to receive them.

Along with her colleagues from Northwell Health's Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Queens New York, critical care nurse Sandra Lindsay unhesitatingly and voluntarily rolled up her sleeve and got her COVID-19 shot in the company of dozens of her colleagues, hospital leadership -- and cameras -- not realizing or planning she'd become the first person in the US to receive it. Within minutes, the now-iconic images and video footage of her receiving a COVID-19 jab administered by fellow nurse Michelle Chester, DNP began circulating in media outlets around the globe and along with it a high-profile opportunity to reach others, inspire them, and build their vaccine confidence.

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