Nursing Coalition Receives Grant, New Members

Nurses for a Healthier Tomorrow (NHT)—a coalition designed to recruit and retain nurses—has received a $100,000 grant to produce and place television, radio, and print ads designed to recruit young people into nursing and inspire existing nurses to remain in the profession. The grant came from the Helene Fuld Health Trust, which is dedicated to improving the health, welfare, and education of student nurses. The ads should be completed in early 2001. The message to be communicated: Nursing is an exciting, fulfilling, and highly diverse profession involving knowledge-based skills such as critical thinking, customer orientation, decision making, scientific inquiry, and technological command.

The 17-member coalition also announced that five new members had been added—boosting total NHT membership to 24 organizations. Luci Baines Johnson and Elizabeth Dole serve as the coalition’s honorary chairs. Member organizations include a variety of nursing associations, including the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, American Nurses Association, the American Red Cross, and numerous other nursing associations.

NHT formed in late 1999 to fight the current nursing shortage. According to NHT spokesperson Lee Vriesman, member organizations decided that the best way to address the nursing shortage was to “attack the problem from a coalition standpoint, not everyone trying to do their own thing.” The coalition has produced an excellent fact sheet on the nursing shortage, which can be found at www.nursesource.org/facts_shortage.html.