Health Care Without Harm Announces Call for Nominations for 2012 Nursing Awards

January 19, 2012
Health Care Without Harm Press Release
Contact: Eileen Secrest  540-376-4495

Health Care Without Harm Announces Call for Nominations for 2012 Nursing Awards

Award Commemorates Nursing Role in Environmentally Sustainable Health Care

 

Reston, VA — The Health Care Without Harm Nurses Workgroup, in conjunction with The Luminary Project, is accepting nominees for its 2012 Nursing Awards. The prestigious Charlotte Brody Award is given to a nurse whose story of environmental activism and accomplishment reflects a significant contribution to environmental health. The Hollie Shaner-McRae Nursing Student Essay Contest recognizes the best essay on how nursing students can encourage the “greening of health care.”

“Nurses play a key role in the current environmental health movement, through activities in professional associations, and through facilitating changes in their communities and places of work that help improve and sustain human health through maintaining a healthy environment,” said Karen A. Ballard, MA, RN, FAAN, HCWH Consultant. “These awards both recognize their important role in the public’s health, and also, we hope they encourage more nursing students and nurses to consider sustainable health care to be a part of their careers.”

The Charlotte Brody Award honors Charlotte Brody, a registered nurse and activist, and a founder of HCWH, who is engaged in making a safer, healthier environment through sustainability. The award seeks to recognize Nurse Luminaries who go beyond everyday nursing endeavors to proactively promote and protect environmental health, and who generate significant outcomes from their efforts.

The Hollie Shaner-McRae Nursing Student Essay Contest recognizes the pioneering environmental work of Hollie Shaner-McRae, DNP, RN, FAAN, coordinator for professional nursing practice at Fletcher Allen Health Care in Burlington, VT. Entrants are asked to discuss how nursing students can encourage the “greening of health care.” The successful essay should be specific to an activity that a nursing student could potentially do or is currently involved in doing and must answer the question, “How Can Nursing Students Foster Environmentally Sustainable Practices in Their Schools of Nursing, Health Care Facilities or Communities”. The contest is open to all undergraduate nursing students presently enrolled and in good standing in a beginning nursing program in the United States and Canada. The winner will receive a stipend for airfare and complementary registration to CleanMed 2012.

The awards will be presented at CleanMed, the international conference for health care sustainability, in Denver, CO, in April 2012.

Nominations for both awards are due by 5 pm Eastern on March 1, 2012.

For more information about the 2012 HCWH Nursing Awards, and for complete rules and applications, visit
the Luminary Project.

The Luminary Project is an effort to capture the illuminating stories of nurses' activities to improve human health by improving the health of the environment. The stories on this website (www.TheLuminaryProject.org) show how nurses are creatively and strategically addressing environmental problems and illuminating the way towards safe hospitals; communities with clean air, land and water; and children born without toxic chemicals in their bodies. The Luminary Project is the collaboration of the Nurses Workgroup of Health Care Without Harm and the nurses and nursing organizations who are the Guiding Lights and Beacons for this Project.

Heath Care without Harm, an international coalition of more than 500 organizations in 53 countries, is working to transform the health care sector, without compromising patient safety or care, so that it is ecologically sustainable and no longer a source of harm to public health and the environment. To learn more about HCWH's work, visit our website at www.noharm.org, our YouTube channel at HCwithoutharm, and our twitter feed at hcwithoutharm.