NASN Director's News

The NASN Affiliate Director is our liaison with the National Association of School Nurses (NASN). Although any officer or member has access to the personnel at NASN, the director receives regular reports from the president and Executive Director of NASN which are to be shared with FASN's Executive Board and stakeholders. In addition, each Affiliate Director is assigned to work on one or more task forces that look at school nursing trends and issues on a national level. Many of NASN's Position Statements are a result of these task forces. Twice a year, Affiliate Directors from all over the country meet together with NASN's President and Executive Director, as well as their respective Task Force Committees. After these meetings, the Affiliate Directors share the focus and direction of NASN with their states.

Our Affiliate Director is Charlotte Barry and she is serving a four year term, from June 2007 through June 2011.

Dear Colleagues in School Nursing,

Thank you for electing me to represent you at the national level as the FASN Director. I was inducted in June at the national conference and will attend Board meeting 2 times a year and committee meetings by phone as required. In this position, I serve as the liaison between the national board and you, the NASN Florida members. I will bring news to you from the NASN Board members and will bring your news and concerns to them. I have been assigned to serve on the Research Task Force.

NASN Director
Charlotte Barry, PhD, RN, NCSN

July 2009 Report

I attended to NASN Board of Directors Meeting in Boston prior to the annual conference. The following provided a summary of key issues.

• Membership: Maintaining membership is a main concern within this economic downturn. Currently there are 14,108 members.  Florida has 294 members and is 11th in state membership.
• The move to DC has been recognized as an important move bringing school nursing to the forefront of proving access to care. Many NASN leadership attend hearings and give input on school nursing.
• Health Care Reform: NASN supports health care reform particularly in the area of access to care. A school nurse ratio bill has bipartisan support. Florida was recognized for obtaining the bipartisan support with a Republican representative from Jacksonville. If passed the bill would provide funding to conduct research in certain states to evaluate adequate ratios. 
• Research: There is strong support for research that contributes to evidence based practice. There is research money available to support research. There were three awards given in June, including one to Shirley Gordon. The application process is available on the web site.
• Board Task Forces meet to update the policies and procedures including Position Statements. One on Delegation is being developed;Research: the development of research priorities are reviewed; School Nurse Competencies are being developed.
• NASN is going to develop an electronic voting system. I gave input from our process.
• Continuing Education Programs Online: Are up and available on the NASN web site free to members and for a small fee for non-members. The CE offerings are being expanded.
• Continuing Education Live Programs are available to affiliates: Disaster Preparedness needs updating; Seizure Management is presented in coordination with the Epilepsy Foundation; SCOPE Obesity Prevention, SETT, School Emergency Triage Training; HANDS  (diabetes care)
• FASN members presented at the NASN conference: Kathy Rose participated in an H1N1 round table; Rhonda Lesniak presented her research on teens self-injury; Shirley Gordon presented a poster on Head Lice and I presented a poster on the Katate Primary School Based Health Center in Uganda.  
• Journal of School Nursing has a new editor: Julia Cowell PhD; RN; FAAN
• The NASN Weekly Digest: in the future will be sent out by email to members in a shortened form to attract members to the web site.
• NASN Discussion Lists: NASN hosts 11 discussion lists for networking and discussion.
• H1N1: Blast email communications were very informative on the unfolding epidemic

The Web site login scheme has been changed.  You will now login as follows: 
Username: NASN ID
Password: Lastname
Example:
Username: 12345
Password: Smith

Let me also point out that your lastname is NO longer in all lowercase letters.
It should be typed just as you would type it using an uppercase first letter and an uppercase letter wherever else is appropriate, for instance: DuRant.