Daily Archives: November 13, 2015

11.13.15
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Apply now! Scholarships for NNU’s Women’s Global Health Leadership classes.

As part of the Certificate Program in Women’s Global Health Leadership, we are pleased to announce the following Spring 2016 courses co-sponsored by National Nurses United and Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey:

  • Impacts of Economic Inequality on Women’s Health;
  • The Growth Imperative, Global Ecology, and Women’s Health; and
  • Health Consequences of the Global Trade in Pharmaceuticals.

The courses will be offered online during the Spring Semester of 2016.  Classes begin January 19, 2016.

Full-tuition scholarships are available for NNU members interested in building global solidarity with those who share RN values of caring, compassion, and community.  To apply for a full-tuition scholarship for a course, please submit a short essay (250 to 500 words) describing how the topic of the course will inform your RN patient advocacy.  NNU members may apply for a scholarship for more than one course.  A separate essay is required for each course for which an RN seeks a scholarship.

All interested scholarship applicants should submit their essay via email to WGHL@nationalnursesunited.org with the subject line “Scholarship” no later than December 4, 2015.  Applicants also need to complete and submit this scholarship cover sheet with their essay. 

If you have any questions, please contact the Certificate Program Administrative Coordinator, Randi Pace, at (510) 433–2793 or WGHL@nationalnursesunited.org. 

This certificate program is of vital importance for nurses as it is the only academic program in the country that honestly assesses the rapidly changing socioeconomic landscape of healthcare in the United States and globally from the standpoint of bedside RNs.  Classes prepare nurses to identify and confront social, economic, political, and environmental forces that place their jobs, livelihoods, communities, and planet in jeopardy. 

Click here to read more about the certificate program.

Class Descriptions:

The Growth Imperative, Global Ecology, and Women’s Health

In the last quarter century, the premise of the possibility of endless growth for the purpose of unlimited capital accumulation has met the inevitable challenges of resource exhaustion on a global scale and its human consequences. Markets and technological innovation are inadequate to solve the resulting environmental crises. Health consequences include illness caused by toxic industrial byproducts, injury from resource extraction processes such as nuclear fission and deep–water oil drilling, manifold health hazards of violent conflict over control of scarce resources in postcolonial states, and dangers that attend climate change. This course will address externalized business costs paid in the currency of human health.

Health Consequences of the Global Trade in Pharmaceuticals

This course explores the political economy of the global pharmaceutical industry. Students will examine ethical issues such as: disproportionate investment in drugs for minor health problems while serious diseases affecting the poor and other marginalized groups remain insufficiently studied; inadequate vaccine development and manufacture; restrictions on the distribution of life-saving generic drugs in third world countries; overuse of antibiotics and the emergence of antibiotic resistant bacteria; and the role of the pharmaceutical lobby influencing healthcare.

Impacts of Economic Inequality on Women’s Health

Domestic and global economic inequality place significant numbers of people at high risk for health crises even as they are denied access to care. This course investigates the “pathogenic” aspects of economic inequality. It examines how systems of unequal resource distribution contribute to wide disparities of health risk, access to healthcare, and clinical outcomes. In addition, the affects of global trade and transnational migration on health costs, healthcare delivery systems, and the availability of healthcare professionals are explored. By tracing links between macro-economic policies and access to healthcare, the course analyzes pathologies suffered in the context of structural violence.”

In Solidarity,

National Nurses United

11.13.15
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Hundreds of Nurses Join Million Student March

In solidarity with students across the country protesting the outrageous costs and crippling debts of their college educations, more than 800 registered nurses with the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee and National Nurses United marched and rallied Nov. 12 with University of California at Berkeley students as part of the Million Student March.

Presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders inspired students to stage the Million Student March as part of his campaign platform push to make public colleges in the United States tuition free through the College for All Act, which would be funded by a Robin Hood Tax on Wall Street financial transactions that would raise up to $300 billion a year.

Activists collected at Sproul Plaza

Chanting “Free college, free your mind, vote for Bernie, now’s the time” and “We need justice for our students, NOW!” nurses marched onto the UC Berkeley campus to join students assembled at Sproul Plaza.

Total student debt in the United States has now reached crisis levels, now estimated at $1.3 trillion, and has quadrupled in just the past 10 years. While millions of students are trapped in never-ending student loan payments that often prevent them from saving money, buying a car, purchasing a house, or starting a family, Wall Street is making millions off lending money to both students and higher education institutions and stock market trading of debt.

CNA Board Member Katy Roemer addressing CNA nurses and student activists

Nurses held signs with how much student debt they owed – some as high as $100,000. They struggle under the weight of their own debt while worrying about what their children face when they go to school.

“We are here with students all across the country to protest a growing debt crisis. We are not alone. Debt is a huge problem all across the United States,” said Katy Roemer, a registered nurse member who sits on the CNA/NNOC board, to huge cheers from the crowd. She shared a story about how she is happy to have recently, after 20 years, finally paid off her loans for private nursing school, but how disheartened and scared she is to be taking on thousands of dollars of new debt to fund her eldest son’s college education. “Our colleges and universities should not be profit centers for the 1 percent. That is not okay and it doesn’t have to be this way.”

Nurses and student activists posted how much student debt they’d accrued

College students in California are calling for free tuition and a return to the ideals and goals of the California Master Plan, a program created by state leaders in the 1960s calling for creating a free higher-education system consisting of junior colleges, state colleges, and the University of California for all Californians to be able to attend college regardless of their income levels.

“We need to normalize free education,” said Lauren Butler, a UC Berkeley senior who is majoring in agriculture and is the lead Robin Hood Tax organizer on campus. “We have to resist the idea that free education is radical. We must not trick ourselves into thinking that we are asking for something too big. What we are doing is reclaiming our education.”