Academy Inducts 73 into the Fellowship

The American Academy of Nursing’spremier event concluded with the in-

duction of 73 nominees into the Fellow-ship. This year’s slate of exceptional nursingleaders included educators, researchers, en-

trepreneurs, and association executives. Theacademy honored the contributions of San-dra Funk, Maricel Manfredi, and UrsulaSpringer, and inducted these individualsinto the fellowship.

The academy’s 2003 Annual Meetingand Conference will be held November13–16, 2003, at the La Costa Resort andSpa, San Diego, California. �

Academy Board of Directors

Carole Kenner has been elected toserve as Secretary, American Acad-

emy of Nursing Board of Directors. Dr.Kenner is Associate Dean of AcademicAdvancement at the University of Illinoisat Chicago. Previously, Dr. Kenner has

served as Chair, AAN Publications Advi-sory Committee.

Divina Grossman and Karren Ko-walski have been elected to the AANBoard of Directors. Dr. Grossman isDirector & Professor at Florida Inter-

national University and previouslyserved on the AAN Conference Plan-ning Committee. Dr. Kowalski is Pres-ident of Kowalski & Associates and pre-viously served on the AAN FellowSelection Committee. �

Academy 2003-2005 Strategic Vision

During its October 2002 meeting,the AAN Board of Directors re-

viewed the organization’s 2003-2004Strategic Vision. The Strategic Visionwill be used by the Board of Directors as

a tool to guide decision-making anddeliberation of related strategic issues,to align organizational resources, and toevaluate progress toward identified re-sults. The Board is seeking comment on

future priority topics. The Vision isposted on Spotlight on the Academy(under Nursing Outlook on the Mosbywebsite) for your review and com-ment. �

New Academy Member Demonstrates Sustaining Success with Innovative Efforts to MeetCommunity Needs

New academy member, John Bart-kowski, DrPH, RN, FAAN, has

been Chief Executive Officer at the Six-teenth Street Community Health Centerin Milwaukee since 1988. Eight years ago,faced with alarming statistics on the prev-alence of childhood lead poisoning in theneighborhood served by the center andconfronted with numbers from the CityHealth Department that suggested leadpoisoning was even more of a problem inother areas of the city, Dr. Bartkowski setout to test his premise that the predomi-nantly Hispanic population on the southside were not having their children testedat the same rate as children in other partsof the city. He also worked to create aproject in concert with the Health De-

partment and funded by a local founda-tion that would find children who hadnot been tested, develop a program toprevent children from becoming lead poi-soned, and keep already poisoned chil-dren from becoming more severely poi-soned.

In 1995, when the Community Out-reach Lead Poisoning Prevention projectstarted, 36% of south side children werefound to be lead poisoned. By project year2000/01, that number had fallen to17.6%, and this year, a more significantdecrease to 9.5% has been obtained. Ac-cording to a study published in the Wis-consin Medical Journal last year, the rate ofchildhood lead poisoning has been re-duced by 47% in the neighborhood

served by the Sixteenth Street Commu-nity Health Center, a greater decline thanin any other part of the city.

Dr. Bartkowski points to these resultswith pride and credits the project’s com-prehensive approach, which includes rely-ing on bilingual community outreachworkers (Spanish/English and Hmong/English), the coordinated testing programat the Sixteenth Street primary care clinic,the openness of the Women, Infant &Children Nutrition Program (WIC) toadapting their program to incorporateblood lead testing and prevention educa-tion, a continuing grant from the State ofWisconsin, the in-kind program supportof the City of Milwaukee Health Depart-ment, and partnerships within the com-

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NURSING OUTLOOK JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2003 45

munity, most notably the South Side Par-ents Against Lead.

However, the success of this projectrests on constant program change to re-spond to conditions in the communityand a series of action steps to adjust howthe project operates to reflect trends in thecollected data. When the project began,community health workers went door todoor to find children who had not beentested for lead poisoning. An in-homecapillary blood lead test, teaching to fam-ilies about lead hazards, follow-up visitsby the outreach workers in which teach-ing is repeated, and low-cost/no-costhome repairs to reduce exposure to leadhazards showed immediate results. Hun-dreds of children were being tested for thefirst time, and an increased understandingspread in the community about the dan-gers of lead poisoning and what can bedone to keep children from being poi-soned. Evening and weekend hours wereadded to the program when fewer familieswere found at home during the day due toimplementation of Wisconsin’s welfare

to work program. Although blood leadtesting continues to be defined as an “un-allowable expense” for our WIC program,additional state funding was acquired tofund a Lead Registrar to coordinate test-ing of children as part of their WIC visit.This funding allowed families to havetheir children tested for lead poisoning aspart of their WIC visit and was a new wayfor us to reach thousands of children whowould have been missed otherwise.

The Lead Project continues to servethe community with outreach workers,and efforts are coordinated with the cityduring times when funding has beenavailable to actually remove lead hazardsfrom homes. With 67% of families thatthe clinic serves living in housing withmoderate to severe lead hazards, efforts toprevent lead poisoning through outreachand education need to continue. Thisyear, an early intervention phase of theproject has been started to intensively fo-cus on children between the ages of 12and 30 months who have low levels oflead poisoning (a blood lead level of 6-9

micrograms per deciliter ug/dL) with theobjective of keeping that level below 10ug/dL, a level that just a few years ago wasthought to be safe. In the next projectyear, Dr. Bartkowski is more hopeful thanever that the Healthy People 2010 goal ofending lead poisoning as a major child-hood disease can be reached.

The Sixteenth Street CommunityHealth Center provides health care, den-tal services, behavioral health counseling,health education, and social services forresidents of Milwaukee’s culturally di-verse south side. Last year, more than16,000 individuals made more than140,000 visits to the center. Services areoffered in English, Spanish, Hmong andLaotian, with respect for cultural valuesand on a sliding fee scale for patientswithout health insurance.

John J. Bartkowski, DrPH, has beenChief Executive Officer at SixteenthStreet since 1988. He holds a BS and MSin Nursing from the University of Wis-consin-Milwaukee and a DrPH from theUniversity of Illinois at Chicago. �

Nurse Leadership Summit to Identify RN’s Role and Responsibility for Emergency Preparedness:Three Academy Members Involved

Vivien De Back, PhD, RN, FAAN

The Wisconsin Nurses Association(WNA) has responded to the na-

tional call to create and sustain a publichealth infrastructure that promotes ade-quate community responses to bioterror-ism attacks and other emergencies. Thefederal government has awarded grantdollars to Wisconsin for the creation of acredible, reliable, and effective publichealth system through the homeland se-curity agenda.

Because WNA recognizes the impor-tance and the value of having nurses in-volved in the development and execution

of a strategy that supports the educationand training of emergency responders, theassociation convened a summit on emer-gency preparedness. Nurses are the com-mon denominator throughout any emer-gency preparedness activity. What thisactivity is, how it is performed, and whereit is performed needs to be determined.

On September 26-28, 2002, a nursingleadership summit was convened for thepurpose of identifying how nurses canassist the leadership in this state in achiev-ing a successful statewide emergency pre-paredness plan. Three American Acad-

emy of Nursing leaders took part in threedays of information sharing and strategicplanning.

CDR Mary W. Chaffee, MS, RN,FAAN, U.S. Navy Deputy Director, NavyMedicine Office of Homeland Security,was a member of a panel speaking on “Pre-paring for Response and Recovery Follow-ing Mass Casualties from a Biological,Nuclear, Chemical or Explosive Events.”

Betsy Weiner, PhD, RN, FAAN, Se-nior Associate Dean for Educational In-formatics, Vanderbilt University Schoolof Nursing, spoke on a panel addressing

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46 VOLUME 51 • NUMBER 1 NURSING OUTLOOK