| Washington, DC — Despite significant gains the LGBTQ+ community has made in recent decades in social acceptance and legal protections and rights, it has remained disturbingly vulnerable in the area of health care. Long subject to stigma, discrimination and lack of awareness and understanding by health care professionals, individuals identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer continue to suffer neglect of their distinctive health care needs.
Thanks to a new two-year grant from the Hearst Foundations to the National League for Nursing Advancing Care Excellence (ACE) for Vulnerable Populations, nurse educators now have the tools to prepare the current and future nursing workforce to overcome such barriers and provide appropriate patient-centered, culturally sensitive care to their LGBTQ+ patients. ACE+, this latest entry in the ACE series, builds on the successful model of free evidence-based, classroom-ready resources adaptable to all levels of higher education in nursing.
“Multiple studies have confirmed the lack of research into LGBTQ+ specific health issues and the scant attention paid to such topics in nursing textbooks and clinical instruction,” said NLN Chair Dr. Patricia S. Yoder-Wise, RN, EdD, NEA-BC, ANEF, FAONL, FAAN, Professor and Dean Emerita at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center and president of The Wise Group. “The time for corrective action is long overdue, and we are so pleased to be collaborating once again with the Hearst Foundations on this vital initiative to close this educational gap with new and relevant LGBTQ+ focused content.”
NLN President and CEO Beverly Malone, PhD, RN, FAAN said, “Through programs like ACE, the National League for Nursing has demonstrated its commitment to collaborations between educators and practitioners to fully inform nursing curricula with emerging practice demands, and to ensure that nursing schools can implement transformative strategies to advance excellence and innovation in nursing education. With online teaching resources and technology-based formats proving increasingly popular during the COVID-19 pandemic, the introduction of ACE+ could not be more timely.”
After the resources have been developed, professional development webinars and workshops will introduce ACE+ and encourage its widespread integration into nursing curricula and instruction across the U.S. At least three ACE+ online teaching strategies and three unfolding cases, developed by leading nurse educators versed in patient care specific to the LGBTQ+ community, will be offered through the unique ACE platform on the NLN website.
For more information, visit NLN.org.
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