Patience to be frank the U.S. health care system is characterized by a high degree of fragmentation across many sectors, which raises substantial barriers to providing accessible, quality care at an affordable price. For too long, the United States has overinvested in treating illness and underinvested in promoting health and preventing disease. The nation has spent more on medical care than any other high-income country, yet it has seen consistently worse health outcomes than those of its peer countries, including the lowest life expectancy, more chronic health conditions, and the highest rates of infant mortality. At the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic has starkly revealed Americans’ unequal access to opportunities to live a healthy life, often resulting from entrenched structural and systemic barriers that include poverty, racism, and discrimination. These two phenomena—suboptimal health outcomes and inequities in health and health care—are not unrelated. If the nation is to achieve better population health, it will have to meet the challenge of mitigating these inequities. Herein lies the greatest contribution of the nursing workforce in the decade ahead. A nation cannot fully thrive until everyone—no matter who they are, where they live, or how much money they make—can live the healthiest possible life, and helping people live their healthiest life is and has always been the essential role of nurses. Whether in a school, a hospital, or a community health clinic, they have worked to address the root causes of poor health. The history of nursing is grounded in social justice and community health advocacy. The Code of Ethics for Nurses with Interpretive Statements from the American Nurses Association (ANA), for example, obligates nurses to “integrate principles of social justice into nursing and health policy.
DNP 840 Discuss two bills or laws that influence nursing practice, one at the federal level and one at the state level