The AARP Center for Health Equity through NursingSM (A-CHEN) is a vehicle for change and a national resource for advancing health equity. We stimulate, promote, and replicate actionable solutions that eliminate disparities and create better opportunities for people to live their healthiest lives possible.
A-CHEN leverages the power of nursing, consumers, AARP, and national and state coalitions for sustainable systems change on these priorities:
A-CHEN Ambassadors
AARP Center for Health Equity through Nursing Volunteer Ambassadors are proven, influential nurse leaders committed to leveraging their roles to influence change in the systems in which they work and beyond. Ambassadors are part of a network of peer leaders who share best practices, opportunities and learnings to implement change, and promote scalable solutions to ending structural barriers to health and well-being.
Photo credit: Greg Kahn for AARP
Health Equity Innovation Awards
To help improve access to care and services for those most disproportionately impacted by disparities, the AARP Center for Health Equity through Nursing and the Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action, an initiative of AARP Foundation, AARP, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), awarded more than $700,000 to 16 projects offering promising solutions aimed at eliminating structural inequities, particularly structural racism, within the nursing profession, health systems, or community.
Workforce Equity
As an evolution of the Campaign’s work and a priority for AARP, this project identifies and promotes nursing career ladder models and other mechanisms to give low-wage health care workers more influence over policies and practices that affect racial and health equity. It collaborates with educational institutions to create sustainable processes for mentoring generations of diverse nursing students and promotes policies and practices to diversify nurse leadership at all levels.
Health Equity Toolkit
Tools, resources, and information that nurses, as well as state coalitions and their partners, can use to help communities tackle the social determinants of health; the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age, including social and economic factors have a great influence on people’s health.
