June 21, 2010

SoN joins Md. Alliance to Transform the Health Professions

The Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing has joined the Maryland Alliance to Transform the Health Professions to help address Maryland’s growing health care needs.

The organization, composed of more than a dozen academic health institutions and historically black colleges and universities in Maryland, is working with the state’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to increase diversity and enrollment at all these schools, with the aim of expanding and diversifying the state’s future health care work force. Through recruitment, faculty exchange and collaborative research efforts, the group hopes to provide a working model for other states.

“This is a landmark alliance in the history of Maryland health care,” said Sandra Angell, who represented the School of Nursing at the signing of the memorandum of understanding. “For the first time, academic and medical institutions are coming together to ensure the growing demand for health care will be met in the future.”

According to the MOU, the alliance will create “a future health care work force that is increasingly proficient in cross-racial and cross-cultural interactions.” Such action to reduce disparities in health and health care comes at a crucial time: On May 25, Baltimore’s first Health Disparities Report Card confirmed that residents with little education and low incomes are more likely to get sick or die than those with more education and money.