2022 ANA Innovation Award Winners Address Gaps in Health Equity and Education Brought on by COVID-19

The American Nurses Association (ANA) and the American Nurses Foundation (the Foundation) recently announced the winners of the 2022 ANA Innovation Awards sponsored by Stryker, a leading global medical technology company. The ANA Innovation Awards highlight, recognize and celebrate exemplary nurse-led innovations that improve patient safety and health outcomes.
Winner of the Individual Nurse Award:
Kasheta Jackson developed Community Pop-Ups: A Rural Approach, an innovative health care delivery model implemented as community-based pop-up clinics across Eastern North Carolina to address social and economic health care barriers . This program makes health care both more accessible and approachable by directly providing preventative services, improving health care equity, and offering resources within communities with the greatest need. This is done through a system-level collaboration at Vidant Health with community-focused intervention. Through partnerships with community leaders and other Vidant Health team members, these clinics have evolved from solely offering health care screenings to providing COVID-19 testing, vaccinations, mental health resources, access to fresh produce, and employment opportunities. (story continues below)

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Community Pop-Ups have been held in a variety of informal community settings, including baseball fields, farms, and parks, to build trust and improve community engagement. Designed and led by nurses, Community Pop-Ups follows the tenets of a holistic nursing care plan, addressing the community’s physical, mental, and environmental needs. In 2021, Community Pop-Ups provided care to more than 400 community participants, identified acute diseases, provided numerous jobs, gave away 500 produce boxes, and delivered 500 health passports in rural locations across Eastern North Carolina. In 2022, Community Pop-Ups plans to make a more substantial impact in the communities it reaches and establish a model for addressing the social determinants of health through qualitative data.
Winners of the Nurse-led Team Award:
A multidisciplinary team of frontline nurses developed the RediStik® Wearable Simulation Task Trainers. They identified educational gaps in the lack of realistic, versatile, and engaging training tools for nurses to learn skills in peripheral intravenous (PIV), Port-a-Cath, and Central Venous Catheter (CVC) care and maintenance. Nurses and other health care professionals are trained to insert peripheral and central venous catheters to administer fluids, draw blood, and deliver medications. The RediStik® innovation offers nurses the opportunity to have hands-on practice while receiving real-time feedback from instructors via zoom. Nurses have access to a system of individual and wearable simulation trainers as well as immersive skills videos filmed from the nurses’ point of view, which are accessible on YouTube® and through a QR code found on the RediStik® Kits.
The RediStik® Wearable Simulation Task Trainer project exceeded initial design goals and has proven to be an asset to the nursing community, according to survey data. Prior to training, 15% of nurses surveyed said they were “confident” on starting PIV lines. After training, 96% of nurses surveyed were “confident”. Nurse confidence and patient outcomes improved not only in Houston, Texas, but in Sub-Saharan Africa through Texas Children’s Hospital’s partnership with the Global HOPE (Hematology Oncology Pediatric Excellence) initiative, which is dedicated to treating and dramatically improving the prognosis for children with cancer and blood disorders in sub-Saharan Africa. The funds from this award will support the distribution of the RediStik® trainers to additional health care systems and nursing schools both locally and internationally.
“The 2022 ANA Innovation award winners have proven that nurses are able to make incredible strides and improve health while navigating turbulent times. These nurses created solutions that scaled beyond their organizations, into their communities, and globally,” said ANA Vice President of Nursing Innovation, Oriana Beaudet, DNP, RN, PHN. “Nurses are the conduits of positive change across health care through their work and advocacy, which was solidified by the Gallup ranking as the Most Honest and Ethical Professions for the 20th consecutive year.”
“As a loyal advocate and supporter of the nursing community, we are honored to partner with ANA and the Foundation as a proud sponsor of the ANA Innovation Awards,” said Stryker’s Vice President and General Manager, Jessica Mathieson. “This year’s winners truly embody the meaning of nurse-led innovation, and we can’t wait to see their ideas expand and grow.”
The 2022 individual nurse and nurse-led team, ANA Innovation Award recipients, will receive monetary prizes of $25,000 and $50,000, respectively. These funds support translational research, development, prototyping, production, testing, and the implementation of these innovations. The award winners will have one year to further develop their innovation and will share their outcomes and findings in 2023. The ANA Innovation Awards are sponsored by Stryker.
You can celebrate these incredible nurse innovators at the 2022 Navigate Nursing Webinar. All are encouraged to attend – nurses, communities, industry members, health care leaders, health systems, innovators, schools of nursing and public health, and nursing advocates. The 2022 Webinar expands upon how nurses can lead in new ways moving into the future.
You can also learn more about how ANA is supporting nurse-led innovation by visiting the ANA Innovation website, where you will also find a list of resources, upcoming events, and nurse-led innovation stories.
The ANA Enterprise is the organizing platform of the American Nurses Association (ANA), the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC), and the American Nurses Foundation. The ANA Enterprise leverages the combined strength of each to drive excellence in practice and ensure nurses’ voice and vision are recognized by policy leaders, industry influencers and employers. From professional development and advocacy, credentialing and grants, and products and services, the ANA Enterprise is the leading resource for nurses to arm themselves with the tools, information, and network they need to excel in their individual practices. In helping individual nurses succeed—across all practices and specialties, and at each stage of their careers—the ANA Enterprise is lighting the way for the entire profession to succeed.