Capitol Beat

Hello, and Happy New Year!

I’m Jacqueline Hixson, the newest addition to the American Nurses Association’s (ANA’s) Policy and Government Affairs team.

It’s no mistake that I came to work at ANA. Nursing has always been near and dear to me, as my mother is a psychiatric nurse. I remember the hard work she put into her job and the long hours she worked while she was getting her master’s degree to become a child and adolescent therapist, all while raising two children as a single mom. Nurses live every day for their patients, and I couldn’t be happier to have landed here at ANA where I can support nurses every day.

Coming to ANA has been a great opportunity for me to live my personal values in my professional life. When I was 18, I was a professional ballerina living without health insurance. I was one injury away from bankruptcy – which to me is unacceptable. Working for ANA means I can make a big difference in the lives of citizens by advancing health care policy that has patients in mind – just like my mom did and nurses everywhere do.

My background is in political campaigns: as a fundraiser, communications director, manager, and consultant on campaigns nationwide. Originally from Georgia, I’ve had great opportunities here in the Washington, D.C. area to make a difference in my community and for our nation.

Now that you know how I got here, let me tell you a little bit about what I do!

As you may know, ANA has long had a Political Action Committee (PAC) dedicated to electing nursing leaders to Congress. Sometimes, we’re fortunate enough to elect a nurse (like Congresswoman Lauren Underwood (D-IL-14)), which is always exciting!

An association’s PAC raises funds from voluntary member contributions to elect officials who align with the association’s purpose, values, and priorities. As ANA-PAC’s Coordinator, I have the distinct opportunity to help elect leaders who advance legislation and policy that move nurses and the health care field forward every day. What a dream job!

If you have any questions regarding the ANA-PAC I’m always happy to chat. Give me a ring at 301-628-5014 or email me at jacqueline.hixson@ana.org; I’d love to hear from you! Of course, you can always learn more at www.anapac.org.

The unique power of nurse advocacy was on full display this year, with grassroots support from activists like you helping to pass key bills in Congress and build momentum on a number of nursing priorities as we head into the new year.

After making legislation to help end nurse abuse the focus of our ANA Hill Day in June, a bipartisan majority in the House passed the bill last month, with support increasing in the Senate.

We saw similar momentum on Title VIII nursing education and workforce development reauthorization, which passed the House unanimously earlier this fall. We’ll continue working to press Senators on how important it is for them follow suit in 2020.

We’ll also continue to tell Congress the story of the U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps, and why recognizing them should be a top priority. If you haven’t yet, please take a minute to read more about this remarkable group of nurses and their service to our country in its time of need.

And to finish out the year strong, your members of Congress are poised to pass a budget with numerous key funding increases that include boosts to Title VIII nursing education and workforce development programs, the National Institute of Nursing Research, HIV/AIDS research programs, and funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to research gun violence prevention – all longstanding ANA priorities. In addition to the increased funding levels, ANA was able to secure language in the bill that requires CMS provide information relating to its criteria for evaluating appropriate nurse staffing.

Looking ahead, we hope you’ve had a chance to visit our new #NursesVote website and action center, which are regularly updated as the campaigns move toward Election Day 2020. If there’s one thing we know for certain, it’s when nurses vote, policy changes for the better.

Thank you, again, for everything that you’ve done this year.

The moving documentary film 5B testifies to the compassionate, committed responses of a nurse-led community in the early days of the HIV and AIDS epidemic. 5B was a ward of San Francisco General Hospital where nurses, along with patients and their caregivers, redefined palliative care in the face of a cruel disease and a health care system in the 1980s that was tragically unprepared. The film is a tribute to nurses who were on those frontlines. On camera, veterans of 5B reflect on their experience and how they transformed care, long before the term “person-centered” entered the lexicon of health care delivery and public policy.

5B viewers are also clearly able to understand, nearly 40 years later, how nurses remain on the frontlines, and continue to play a key role in HIV and AIDS care. Today, more than one million people in the U.S. are living with HIV, and around 15 percent of these people are unaware that they have HIV. As nurse leaders in the field Carole Treston and Carol Dawson-Rose write in the December 2019 issue of American Nurse Today, we now have treatment and prevention technologies that are “proven to work and allow us to imagine an end to the HIV epidemic.”

Treatment as prevention is the approach that holds the promise of reaching that goal of ending HIV. Specifically, effective use of antiretroviral treatment can lower HIV levels to the point where HIV cannot be transmitted. Recognizing the power of this approach, the American Nurses Association (ANA) recently signed onto the U=U prevention campaign (Undetectable = Untransmittable, or, U=U). In addition, use of preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is a proven intervention to prevent HIV from being acquired through sexual contact.

As Treston and Dawson-Rose point out, however, not everyone is benefitting from these approaches. The barriers are many, including stigma, systemic racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, lack of affordable health care coverage, and other social determinants of health such as lack of transportation or housing. The implications of these challenges for nurses’ role in ending the epidemic are explored in ANA’s updated position statements Prevention and Care for HIV and Related Conditions.

Nurses are pivotal to efforts to end HIV, by supporting patient access to testing, as well as ensuring access to treatment and prevention. A new ANA publication Ending the HIV Epidemic: Frontline Interventions Every Nurse Should Know links to useful guidelines and practice resources. Many advanced practice registered nurses can prescribe HIV treatment and PrEP, and nurses can coordinate care for people living with HIV when they need support to stay in treatment.

In addition to supporting a treatment-as-prevention approach, ANA prioritizes community-based solutions that meet the needs of diverse groups of people living with HIV and AIDS. The policy statements also highlight the APRN’s role with prescriptive authority to treat and prevent HIV, and call for full practice authority at the federal and state levels. The updated policy statements are aligned with national strategies and goals, and mirror the policy priorities of ANA’s partner Association of Nurses in AIDS Care (ANAC).