Diversity, equity, and inclusion are an essential long-term investment. At the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing (JHSON), that investment has taken many forms seemingly small and unquestionably large—all intentional.
The efforts have included first accepting that structural racism, LGBTQ insensitivity, and other social inequities exist and embracing the challenge of beginning to eradicate them. JHSON has sought to define diversity, encapsulating it where it lives and where it doesn’t, not shrinking from responsibility for it, and bringing it into the open.
JHSON has given diversity a voice—and listened.
With students it means casting a broader net, as with the Baltimore Talent Scholars Program, which brings city high schoolers with an interest in health care into the MSN (Entry into Nursing) Program and nurturing them so that they succeed. It is being open to the need for more men in the nursing field. It is seeking out and embracing excellent students from various backgrounds regardless of socioeconomic status so that the Johns Hopkins Nurses sent into the workforce best represent the communities JHSON and they will serve.
With faculty this means, among other genuine measures, bringing in more diverse teachers at all levels and then making the newcomers feel not just welcome but part of the decision-making team. JHSON faculty are not just a positive number on the diversity scale but essential to the JHSON mission.
For curriculum, it means no sacred cows.
It means bringing issues into the sunlight. In this spirit, JHSON has launched a web and social media campaign, #WeAreHopkinsNursing, to showcase successes—three consecutive HEED Awards for Diversity in Education and counting, for instance—and examine openly where the school has faltered in the past and detail what JHSON is doing about it.
Learn more about JHSON’s commitment to:
- Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Research
- Building a Diverse, Equitable, and Inclusive Environment
- Teaching and Learning as a Pathway to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
- Leveraging Our Differences to Become a Better Community
JHSON will remain proud of its progress on diversity, equity, and inclusion while learning from and with other nursing schools (and from within its own ranks) and remaining open to the work, soul searching, and determination to witness—and lead—change.
