The following is the New Jersey Nursing Initiative (NJNI) weekly news roundup, highlighting nursing and health care stories from around the state.
Foundation’s Vision Expands Into More Holistic Approach to Healthcare (NJ Spotlight)
The nation’s largest health-focused foundation is touting a wider-ranging approach to public health, including initiatives to give people more access to fresh produce, encourage designs for “walkable” towns and cities, improve public parks and transportation, and provide people with better housing. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is kicking off what it promises will be a decades-long effort to build what it calls a “Culture of Health” — and some of the leading voices for health and health care in New Jersey are embracing its vision. The “Culture of Health” approach will help the foundation determine how it disperses the $400 million in grants it awards annually. This will likely have significant consequences for New Jersey, where the foundation has historically made 10 percent of its contributions.
Greg Brown elected new head of Rutgers board of governors amid turmoil over campus governance (The Star-Ledger)
Rutgers University’s governing board has selected a new chairman amid turmoil over the board’s future. Greg Brown, chairman and chief executive of Motorola Solutions, will assume the unpaid post July 1. The board also unanimously approved a plan to merge the School of Nursing-Camden and the nursing faculty and staff from the School of Nursing at Stratford. Rutgers took over the Stratford program last summer during its merger with most of the former schools of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. Earlier this year, the board approved a merger of its nursing programs in North and Central Jersey over the objections of the school’s unions, which worried the mergers would lead to layoffs.
Christie joins groundbreaking for nursing education center at Thomas Edison State College (The Record)
Governor Christie helped break ground on a new nursing education center named for a late Bergen County lawmaker at Thomas Edison State College, which he said will serve as a gateway to the state capital. The W. Cary Edwards School of Nursing, named after the former Assemblyman and state attorney general from Oakland, replaces the dilapidated Glen Cairn Arms apartments, which were demolished last year. Christie said the new building, along with a new Trenton mayor taking office in two weeks, could spur the change the struggling city needs.