This is part of the April 2013 issue of Sharing Nursing's Knowledge.

Coffee-table books are designed to draw attention, and that is precisely what nurses got after the 2012 publication of a hefty tome featuring portraits of nurses from all walks of life.

The American Nurse has caught the eye of reporters for some of the largest-circulation publications in the country, including USA Today, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, National Public Radio, and the Huffington Post.

Dozens of other news outlets, such as the Lancaster New Era in Pennsylvania and local news programs in Louisiana and Northern California, have also covered the book’s release, as have trade publications like the American Journal of Nursing and Johns Hopkins Nursing Magazine, according to the book’s website.

The book, by photographer and filmmaker Carolyn Jones, tells the stories of 75 nurses working in various locations across the country—from a maternity ward in Baltimore to remote homes in Appalachia to a prison in the South. It is poised to get even more attention after completion of a  feature-length documentary film about six of the book’s subjects.

The book was supported by Fresenius Kabi USA, an international health care company that focuses on products for the therapy and care of critically and chronically ill patients. It is designed to elevate the voice of nurses in the United States, according to the book’s website.

Speaking to the nation’s nurses in a video statement, Rhonda Collins, MSN, RN, a nurse who is vice president and business manager at Fresenius Kabi USA, says: “We recognize you for who you are. We see you, and we appreciate everything you do.”

Newspaper readers and television viewers, it appears, are getting the message.

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Around the country, print, broadcast and online media outlets are covering the groundbreaking work of Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) leaders, scholars, fellows and grantees. Some recent examples:

An op-ed in the Star-Ledger reflects on the contributions of Tom Kean, former governor of New Jersey, during his more than two decades of service on the RWJF Board of Trustees, including eight years as chairman of the Board. Learn more about Kean’s commitment to leadership and service.

The Washington Post reports on an inhaler with a built-in Global-Positioning System (GPS), designed by RWJF Health & Society Scholars alumnus David Van Sickle, PhD, MA, that sends a signal with the time and location to a remote server every time a patient uses it. The data is then sent regularly to patients and physicians to help provide more comprehensive treatment. The data can also be used to find asthma “hot spots” in cities, where attacks are triggered, Health & Society Scholar Meredith Barrett, PhD, said. Read more about Van Sickle’s work here and here.

Judi Hilman, director of the Utah Health Policy Project and an RWJF Community Health Leader, gave comments to the Deseret News about decisions and deadlines Utah will have to meet in 2013 to comply with the health reform law.

Love her or hate her, Jackie Peyton—also known as “Nurse Jackie,” the lead character in the eponymous prime-time medical drama on Showtime—inspires passion.

"Despite her deeply flawed persona, Jackie is an unusually helpful TV nurse because, as a skilled professional, she advocates for patients and makes astute assessments and courageous interventions to save lives—sending messages that people badly need to hear about nursing,” says Sandy Summers, RN, MSN, MPH, founder of The Truth About Nursing and co-author of Saving Lives: Why the Media’s Portrayal of Nurses Puts Us All at Risk.

But the American Nurses Association is not so thrilled. A drug addict and an adulterer, Jackie offers a “distasteful portrayal of nurses and nursing,” the association argued when the show debuted in 2009.

Jackie is just one of the many fictional, and often controversial, nurse characters in the entertainment media who have helped shape the national image of nursing.

Name Your Favorite Fictional Nurse Character

Some of the higher profile TV nurse characters from the late 1960s and 1970s include Julia Baker, a nurse and widowed single mother from the series Julia; Consuelo Lopez, the nurse in the medical drama Marcus Welby MD; and Margaret ‘Hot Lips’ Houlihan from the critically acclaimed television series M.A.S.H.

By Linda Wright Moore

RWJF Senior Communications Officer

Attending the 36th annual convention of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) last week in Philadelphia provided an opportunity to reflect on the many challenges facing reporters and the news industry in the 21st century. It was also a personal trip down my professional memory lane.

At the start of my career, as a television reporter and anchor, I attended my first NABJ annual meeting in New Orleans in 1983. The organization was small back then – just a few hundred members. We all knew each other by name. Fast forward to 2011, and I was happy to connect with old friends, including founders of the organization.

The group has grown dramatically to 3,000 members, and more than 2,500 people attended the Philadelphia gathering. The profession of journalism and newsgathering has also been transformed in response to tectonic shifts in the way we gather and disseminate information. Consider: “publisher” used to define an institution that had capacity to print a book, newspaper or magazine. Now, it’s anyone with a laptop, an Internet connection and something to say.

But don’t be fooled. The explosive growth of information and ease of access to it do not mean that journalism is a dying craft. In this 21st century age of information overload – where opinion, conjecture and even fiction can masquerade as fact – the ability to find credible, engaging, reliable sources of news and information is more valuable than ever. A free press is still the cornerstone of democracy – enabling us to make informed decisions about political leaders and policies. And we also rely on media to keep us informed about issues and policies affecting every aspect of our lives, including our health and health care.

At the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) booth at the NABJ Career Fair & Exhibition, we provided an array of information about Foundation programs – touching on the work of every team: Childhood Obesity, Coverage, Pioneer, Public Health, Quality/Equality, Vulnerable Populations and Human Capital. We distributed the first edition of the Human Capital Expert Resource Guide, which highlights the work and expertise of selected RWJF scholars, fellows and leaders with a focus on issues of concern to Black and Latino communities. We hope it will be a useful source of experts to interview for reporters developing stories around health and health care issues. Take a look and let us know how we can make future editions more useful for journalists and other researchers.

Aaron Kesselheim, M.D., J.D., M.P.H., is an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a primary care physician based in the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He is a 2009 recipient of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Award in Health Policy Research.

As a physician who studies trends in drug prescribing and seeks to promote evidence-based medicine, I have always been intrigued by the paradox related to the impact of pharmaceutical marketing on physicians’ behavior. Physicians are highly educated, and that preparation is intended to impart special insight when it comes to the medical literature and evaluating the data underlying potential treatment decisions. It is perhaps not surprising, therefore, that when physicians are surveyed, most report that pharmaceutical marketing does not sway their individual prescribing choices. Yet most objective studies show that marketing does indeed drive prescribing in non-evidence-based ways. And physicians, when polled, will generally not deny this effect, although they usually point fingers at their colleagues, believing them to be influenced by marketing, while claiming that they personally are not.

What’s going on? In numerous cases, pharmaceutical industry marketing has been shown to rely on distorted presentations of the medical literature, and many advertising campaigns improperly favor use of the particular drug being promoted in order to sell more product. Yet most physicians take seriously their professional ethical requirements, and I don’t doubt that all physicians try to apply their years of training to offer the best care they can to their patients. If so, why are physicians as susceptible to marketing messages from the pharmaceutical industry as ordinary consumers are susceptible to marketing messages they see on television?

One possible contributing factor is the perspectives and practices formed early in physicians’ careers. The socialization effect of professional schooling can be strong, exerting a powerful influence on how students behave after graduation. It is well known that medical students are frequently exposed to pharmaceutical marketing, even in their preclinical years. Some policymakers dismiss the relevance of these interactions; after all, medical students cannot prescribe drugs, so the potential for direct harm is limited. And medical students are often deeply in debt, and thus many sorely need the free supplies and books that might be distributed to them by pharmaceutical manufacturers.

This post is part of an ongoing series of Voices from the Field by scholars, fellows and alumni of RWJF Human Capital programs. The author, Matthew Press, M.D., M.Sc., is an alumnus of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars program and is host and producer of the Clinical Scholars Health Policy Podcast series. Press is an assistant professor in the Departments of Public Health and Medicine at the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City.

The career path of Dr. Bob Ross, President and CEO of the California Endowment, had an early trajectory that makes the jaws of aspiring health policy leaders drop with admiration: within just two years of graduating from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Clinical Scholars program, he became Health Commissioner of Philadelphia.

How did he do it? As I learned when I recently interviewed him for the RWJF Clinical Scholars Health Policy Podcast, it took a little bit of luck and one bold, creative solution to a daunting public health crisis. “It’s not something certainly I either envisioned or foresaw or planned,” Dr. Ross said. “It just kind of happened that way.” Take a listen to the interview to hear Dr. Ross’s story and to learn how the California Endowment, the health foundation he currently leads, plans to spend $1 billion over the next ten years to build healthy communities.

Dr. Ross is the seventh guest in this season of the podcast series, joining a variety of other health policy A-listers who sat down with me for conversations about careers, issues, and anecdotes.

Imagine this: you’ve had an accident and totaled your relatively inexpensive, extremely reliable car. The insurance company offers to replace it with a luxury car, at no extra cost. You know the luxury car may not last as long or work as well, but it’s the newest thing on the market. Do you take it?

Consumers sometimes think of their health care and health insurance in this way, said RWJF Clinical Scholar alumnus David Penson, M.D., M.P.H. (1997-1999), a professor of urologic surgery and medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He recently spoke with Larry Van Horn, of Forbes’ Second Opinion blog, about the “business side of patient care.”