Send a letter to Secretary Thompson about the "Take a Loved One to a Doctor Day"!

Send a letter to Secretary Thompson, HHS executives and Tom
Joyner about the anti-nurse "Take a Loved One to a Doctor Day"!

This letter will be faxed to Secretary Tommy Thompson at 202-690-7203 and
emailed to:
Tom Joyner, Honorary Chair;
Garth Graham, MD, MPH, Director, Office of Minority Health;
Tuei Doong, Deputy Director;
Mirtha Beadle, Acting Deputy Director;
Teresa Chapa, PhD, MPA, Director, Division of Policy and Data;
Cynthia Amis, Director, Division of Program Operations; and
Blake Crawford, Director Division of Information and Education

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A copy of our executive director's letter is below--feel free to use it. However, an original letter from you is more powerful. If you have a moment for even one original sentence, please delete the form letter and write one of your own. If you do write one of your own PLEASE DRAFT IT IN YOUR WORD PROCESSOR and then paste it into the window below. A rare glitch with our web site has twice deleted letters that were drafted on this page--so it is safer to draft it elsewhere and save a copy. Also, if you draft in a word processor, you will be able to SPELL CHECK it-- something that our web page cannot do. Thank you very much.
Message:*	Dear Secretary Thompson, Tom Joyner, Garth Graham, Tuei Doong, Teresa Chapa, Cynthia Amis and Blake Crawford: I am writing to request that you change the name of the Department's "Take a Loved One to the Doctor Day" campaign to one that would not exclude Advanced Practice Registered Nurses (APRNs) including Nurse Practitioners, Nurse Midwives, Nurse Psychotherapists and Clinical Nurse Specialists. This modest change would enhance the campaign's effect on the very minority populations the campaign targets, which are served in significant part by APRNs. At the same time, it would address the public image problem that is a critical factor in the nursing shortage, one of the nation's most urgent public health crises. At the outset, I note that APRNs are already within the scope of the campaign, as your press release announcing the September 2004 campaign included nurses when it urged the public to make appointments with physicians or "other health professionals." So it would appear that the critical issues are whether the campaign's name adequately reflects who is likely to be providing care to those it targets, and whether it serves the Department's overall purpose of promoting public health. We submit that a change to include APRNs would better serve both these goals. As you know, the campaign is intended primarily to reduce health disparities affecting ethnic and racial minorities. Often, in the communities of these minorities, APRNs primary health care is one of the only, or even the only, practical option for many residents. The nation's 100,000+ APRNs provide high quality, cost-effective primary care to both adults and children. Substantial research confirms that APRN care is at least as good as that of physicians. And the holistic, community-oriented approach of APRNs is an excellent fit for the target populations of this campaign. The change we recommend would also serve to ease the critical nursing shortage, which is currently threatening lives nationwide and could be a major problem in the nation's response to any significant mass casualty event. One key factor in the shortage is the low level of public understanding of the real contributions of nurses. Today's nurses--though still subject to regressive stereotypes in most popular media--are highly skilled, life-saving professionals who are changing the future of health care through groundbreaking research and clinical innovation. Prominent recognition of the contributions of APRNs through a major public campaign like this one would remind the public that nurses are a vital part of the nation's health care team. We recognize that the current campaign title is catchy, and perhaps it has tested well in focus groups. However, surely some other alternative could communicate the basic idea in an equally effective way. A potential idea might include "Take a Loved One for a Check-Up Day," but we're sure that your professional staff could come up with many options. Please let me know if I can be of any assistance in pursuing this modest change, which would make a big difference for nurses, their patients, and the nation as a whole. Thank you very much.
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