According to the Canadian Nurses Association (2021), advocacy involves engaging others, exercising one’s voice, and mobilizing evidence to influence policy and practice. It entails speaking out against inequity and inequality and participating directly and indirectly in political processes and acknowledging the importance of evidence, power, and politics in advancing policy options.
Advocating requires the nurse to have courage and self-efficacy and requires the nurse to act with integrity in standing up for one’s beliefs, fighting for what is right, even when confronted with opposition, in the belief that one can be an agent of change (Gottlieb, 2013). We at CANE are pleased to highlight some of our work concerning advocacy. View our campaign involvement at the link below.
Accelerating environmental change has disrupted the global conditions on which we humans have depended for thousands of years.
Climate change, pollution, loss of biodiversity, land degradation, industrial agriculture, and the resulting changes to fundamental elements such as our diet are causing a heavy burden of disease in all dimensions of human physical, mental and spiritual health.
Nurses have been called to develop their capacity in helping people adapt to the changes resulting from planetary disruption. In order to respond adequately to this call, nurses need a robust educational foundation, understanding the links between environmental disruption and human health.
This section provides tools for nurses to integrate this knowledge.
Canadian Nurses Association. (2021). Policy and Advocacy. https://www.cna-aiic.ca/en/policy-advocacy
Gottlieb, L. (2013). Strengths-based nursing care: health and healing for person and family. New York: Springer Pub. Co