Success of vaccines curbing COVID-19 is dependent on how many Americans are vaccinated

Opinion Echo published in the Cincinnati Enquirer Cincinnati.com,  newspaper: Vaccines don't stop pandemics, vaccinations do
Nicholas J. Vehr - Opinion contributor



We all know that mask wearing, hand washing, social distancing, avoiding crowds and more are vitally important preventative steps in slowing the spread of COVID-19. We also know these important steps won’t stop the pandemic. They can only slow it down so health care services are not overwhelmed.

COVID-19 vaccines are just around the corner and arriving faster than any pandemic vaccines in history. 

Recent good news from Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca have many of us encouraged and hopeful.

Yet, vaccine hesitancy is much too high. According to a news release from the COVID Collaborative, only one-third (34%) of Americans say they will definitely get vaccinated, while 86% say they believe that a vaccine will effectively curb the virus, a gap of 52%.

In the Black and Latinx communities, which have been disproportionately impacted by the virus, this survey indicated that only 14% of Black Americans and 34% of Latinx Americans have trust in vaccine safety.

There is a trust gap. Until it is bridged, vaccine efficacy will be limited, this pandemic will lumber along and thousands more will die.

The success of vaccines curbing COVID-19 is dependent on how many Americans are vaccinated; vaccines don’t stop pandemics, vaccinations do. Most experts project vaccines will be available for the majority of Americans in late spring and summer of 2020. Much smaller, high-risk or high-exposure subsectors of Americans will have access much sooner.

With the obvious trust gap, strategic, creative and ubiquitous communications are critical. These communications must build trust by educating and informing the right people, through the right channels at the right time and encourage the right action … get vaccinated!

Vehr Communications’ partner from Spokane (WA), DH Communications, shares these important three phases for strategic communications to build trust and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccinations.

Transition: Pacing content

For those organizations communicating about COVID-19, now is the time to start talking generally about vaccination safety and effectiveness. As winter turns to spring, you’ll be more of a trusted resource as specific information about specific vaccines becomes available.

It is important to keep reinforcing prevention communications (masks, social distancing, washing hands, small groups, etc.) at the same time. Remember, it will be months before vaccines are available to the general public.

Science: How to message

While it sounds dramatic, it’s true: This is life and death. 

Messaging about vaccines needs to be direct and unambiguous, based in science rather than emotions or morality. In plain and clear language, unpack the following:

• How vaccines work
• How vaccines were developed
• Up-to-date distribution plans

As our DH colleagues shared, messaging about vaccines also needs to connect back to people’s real lives. "Getting vaccinated means getting back on the path to a 'normal' life of kids going to school, giving grandma hugs and visiting restaurants once it is safe to do so."

Trust: Message carriers

One consequence of the unfortunate politicization of the pandemic is a distrust in government. What this means strategically is that politicians and, sadly, public health officials, cannot be the only voices.

Vaccination communications must be delivered by trusted message carriers*. These messengers can be very localized or national. The encouraging work of the Ad Council, which just launched a $50 million fund for a national COVID-19 education effort, and the COVID Collaborative, a who’s who of leading experts in health, education and the economy, are so important in this regard.

Bridging the trust gap is the single biggest obstacle to the success of the largest vaccine development and vaccination effort in the history of the world. It also is something we know how to address through fundamental, but significant, strategic communications. With national efforts just beginning, localities and states need to lean in aggressively.

America failed at managing the spread of COVID-19. Nearly 270,000 U.S. citizens have died already. Time is not our ally as we fight this virus. Time is not our ally as we try to rebuild trust and encourage all individuals to get vaccinated.

This may be the most important communications challenge our world has ever faced. Let’s get it right.

Nicholas J. Vehr is CEO of Vehr Communications.

*Nursing!  https://news.gallup.com/poll/274673/nurses-continue-rate-highest-honesty-ethics.aspx

Nursing - Two Media Features During National Nurses Month: Expanding Roles

Mother's Day Washington Post and the weekend Bill Moyers National Public Broadcasting interview program gave nurses feature spots on Mother's Day Weekend - during National Nurse Appreciation Month. Do these features represent all nurses?

Washington Post highlights the national campaign launched by Nurse Practitioners (advanced practice nurses) who are educating the public about their role in expanding access to quality and affordable primary care to help fill physician shortages.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/nurse-practitioners-look-to-raise-profile-fill-gap-from-doctor-shortage/2012/05/12/gIQAHmHYLU_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines

A more controversial, out of the ordinary, story aired on Moyers and Company, a National Public Broadcasting interview program where the commentator conducts civil conversations with people engaged in public policy through the media or politics.

In the story "Serious as a Heart Attack", Moyers interviewd RoseAnn DeMoro, from National Nurses United, about how some nurses are engaging in labor movements beyond their scope of practice, so to speak, and supporting initiatives like "99%", "Occupy" and a movement calling for a National Transaction Tax.  (Prolific Florence Nightingale surely never wrote about these issues!)

http://www.alternet.org/occupywallst/155402/%22serious_as_a_heart_attack%22%3A_roseann_demoro_explains_how_to_raise_$350_billion_from_financial_transaction_tax/

Do these two features speak about all nurses, for all nurses or suggest all nurses agree with the above?
I'm a nurse. This is my opinion:

Nurse Practitioners are excellent primary care providers!  They excel when their practices are synergistic with physicians, especially when they refer clients to appropriate specialists, as needed.  Kudos to Nurse Practitioners for launching a campaign to explain how nursing has grown from being bedside caregivers to key providers in health care.  Nurse practitioners are raising the standard of care for all providers and improving access to care for people who might otherwise be unable to receive health care because they live too far from a facility or cannot afford to pay - nurse practitioners fill both these voids and more!  I can safely say most nurses applaud the expanding role of advanced practice nurses - who work hard to achieve higher educational goals and provide excellent care.

As for "Serious as a Heart Attack", and National Nurses United- ahhh (!), not so fast to leap on this point of view.

Nurses are one of the most trusted professional groups.  I sincerely hope spokesperson RoseAnn DeMoro isn't using the compassionate support nurses receive from public opinion to promote national economic policies, especially ones we, frankly, are not familiar with.  In my years in nursing education, traditional- baccalaureate and graduate - I didn't have even one course in economic theory.  Surely, nurses should understand more about economics, but, if you polled student nurses, I'm confident a course on economics and tax policy would be way-way down on their academic priority list!

During the interview between DeMoro and Moyes, I waited for the correlation to be explained between nursing and economic-tax policies- if there was a connection made, it escaped me.

So, why is National Nurses United involved in the unfamiliar National Financial Transaction Tax?
I don't know.

Of course, nurses are advocates for our clients-patients- their families and other care givers.  To the extent these groups are involved in the care of a client, I suppose it makes sense to help provide for their economic as well as physicial well being whenever possible.  Nonetheless, I can't understand the correlation - not yet.

So, with some caution, I must advise Mr. Moyers to bring on other nursing advocates to help better explain RoseAnn DeMoro's point of view.

Otherwise, it has been a great media weekend for nursing - who'd-a thought even 20 years ago that nurses would be on the cutting edge of such prestigious news?

Happy Mother's Day and Nurse Appreciation Month!

Future of Nursing - Highlighted in Institute of Medicine Report (IOM)

Page 4 ANA Maine Journal February, March, April 2011
Initiative on the Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action

http://www.nursingald.com/Uploaded/NewsletterFiles/ME2_11.pdf
  
Panelists at the Future of Nursing program said the initiative’s final published report is similar to the 1910 Flexner Report sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation, credited with transforming the standards for physicians and medical education.

by Juliana L’Heureux, BS, RN, MHSA

Professional nurses are essential in the efforts to improve the nation’s access to quality health care, said Donna E. Shalala, chair of the Robert Wood Johnson Future of Nursing initiative.

Shalala spoke at the Nov. 30, 2010, Summit on Advancing Health Through Nursing, in Washington, D.C.

Shalala is the committee chair of the initiative that presented the report, The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health, at the Institute of Medicine (IOM) with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF).

Shalala served as secretary of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (USDHHS) under President Bill Clinton.

She called for collaboration among nurses and healthcare colleagues to transform the nation’s healthcare system and to improve patient care.

“There is not a more challenging time for health care than right now,” said Shalala in the program’s opening remarks. The presentation was also webcast to approximately 100 other locations in the nation including St. Joseph’s College in Standish, Maine.

“Nurses can and should play a fundamental role in transforming and improving health care,” she said.
The country’s more than 3 million nurses are vital in implementing and supporting the objectives set forth in the 2010 Affordable Care Act, the legislation that provides the most sweeping healthcare overhaul since the 1965 creation of the Medicare and Medicaid programs, according to the report. (For more information on the report, go to http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2010/The-Future-of-Nursing-Leading-Change-Advancing-Health.aspx or http://tinyurl.com/2brrusk)

Moreover, nurses were voted the most trusted healthcare professionals for eight years in a row, in a Gallop Poll reported by the American Nurses Association (ANA) on Dec. 9, 2009.
In anticipation of the passage of national healthcare reform, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Institute of Medicine launched a two-year initiative to respond to the need to assess and transform the nursing profession. “It’s time for nurses to step forward and take responsibility for the future of health care,” says Shalala.

Panelists at the Future of Nursing program said the initiative’s final published report is similar to the 1910 Flexner Report sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation, credited with transforming the standards for physicians and medical education.

A committee was appointed by the IOM to develop the RWJF-funded initiative on the Future of Nursing. The purpose of the joint IOM/RWJF effort was to report an action plan or blueprint for the future of nursing.
Five key action-oriented objectives detailed in the report are:
• Scope of Practice: Nurses should practice to the full extent of their education and training.
• Nursing Education: Nurses should achieve higher levels of education and training through an improved education system that promotes seamless academic progression.
• Removing Barriers to Practice: Nurses should be full partners, with physicians and other healthcare professionals, in redesigning health care in the U.S.
• Data Collection: Effective workforce planning and policy making require better data collection and information infrastructure.
• Fostering Inter-Professional Collaboration: Private and public funders, health care organizations, nursing education programs and nursing associations should expand opportunities for nurses to lead and manage collaborative efforts with physicians and other members of the health care team to conduct research and to redesign practice environments and health systems (The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health, 2010, S-9).
Additionally, five desired outcomes were cited to evaluate how the blueprint will be implemented:
• Establish leadership in the nursing community to help drive and engage in the Future of Nursing report’s recommendations.
• Raise the visibility for the Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommendations and expand a support base to include stakeholders from key sectors, including government, higher education, consumer organizations, health professionals and others.
• Further the discussion of the IOM recommendations and contribute to the analysis and understanding of emerging perceptions about the recommendations.
• Plan action steps and follow-up to provide further engagement beyond the Nov. 30 rollout meetings. Educate local and state media about the recommendations.
• Engage state lawmakers and/or key policy leaders to learn about the recommendations.
Affiliated groups in five states—California, New Jersey, New York, Michigan and Minnesota—were selected to participate in pilot programs for the measures recommended in the Future of Nursing report:
• California—Betty Moore School of Nursing at the University of California, Davis; California Institute of Nursing and Health Care
• New Jersey—New Jersey Chamber of Commerce; New Jersey Nursing Initiative
• New York—Institute for Nursing; New York State Workforce Center; New York AARP Executive Council
• Michigan—Michigan Health Council
• Mississippi—Mississippi Department of Budgeting and Administration; Nursing Workforce Center
Donald Berwick, M.D., interim director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), delivered a keynote speech in support of the IOM/RWJF report. He praised the Affordable Care Act and pledged to include nursing leadership during healthcare reform’s implementation.
Information about the Summit on Advancing Health Through Nursing and the entire report is available at www.thefutureofnursing.org.

Shalala’s video statement on the Future of Nursing is available at
http://www.thefutureofnursing.org/resource/detail/video-statement-donna-e-shalala
or at http://tinyurl.com/6hj3qdx.