From 2003 to 2006, staff at Spann Communications, a Pittsburgh communications consulting firm, developed and distributed two eight-page policy briefs as part of a series entitled Charting Nursing's Future. The briefs are designed to educate state policy leaders and others about the full extent of the nursing shortage and its underlying causes.

Key Results

The two policy briefings include:

• Charting Nursing's Future, January 2005. (Available online.) Article titles include:
  • Addressing the Nursing Shortage: Partnerships among Governments, Schools, and Employers Are Getting Results
  • Shortages and Partnerships at the State Level
  • Partnerships to Expand Educational Capacity
  • Partnerships to Recruit, Retain, and Graduate More Nursing Students
  • Partnerships to Transform the Nursing Work Environment
  • Toward an Agenda for Change
• Charting Nursing's Future, February 2006. (Available online.) Article titles include:
  • Addressing the Nursing Shortage: State Nursing Workforce Centers Collect and Assess Data Needed for Policy Change
  • Nursing Workforce Centers: Studying Supply and Demand at the State Level
  • Counting Nurses at the Federal Level: NURSYS and the National Sample Survey
  • Five State Nursing Workforce Centers with Progressive Data Initiatives (North Carolina, Iowa, Oregon, Mississippi, New Jersey)
  • A Federal Role in Establishing Data Infrastructure

Project staff mailed approximately 7,000 copies of each brief to hospital executives, members of Congress, state legislators involved in nursing policy, state governors, and nursing and nursing education leaders.

Funding

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) supported this solicited project through a contract for $104,711.

After the Grant

In 2005, Spann Communications received another contract from RWJF (ID# 053203, for $677,413) to produce and distribute eight additional policy briefs on nursing issues.