The Connell School of Nursing (CSON) has been awarded membership to the National Hartford Center of Gerontological Nursing Excellence (NHCGNE), an organization focused on the health and care of older adults, as well as the multidisciplinary study of old age.
Membership in the National Hartford Center gives CSON the opportunity to access over 300 gerontological nursing leaders, collaborate with member institutions, and develop its programs using the latest practices for both students and faculty, according to the NHCGNE website.
“To be nurse leaders, it’s really important that you’re networked with other nurse leaders around the country and around the world,” said Susan Gennaro, dean of CSON. “One of the things that I’m excited about for this designation from the Hartford Center is that it puts us at the table with other recognized leaders in gerontological nursing, so it really enables our faculty and our students to interact with what’s really happening—cutting-edge—in terms of gerontological research and education.”
The National Hartford Center is a collaboration between the Gerontological Society of America and schools of nursing that have demonstrated the highest level of commitment to the field of gerontological nursing. CSON joins 32 other member institutions across the country, as well as the school of nursing at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
The center’s mission is to advance the ability of nurses to provide care for the health of older adults by developing faculty, advancing gerontological nursing science, adopting the best practices, fostering leadership, and designing and shaping policy.
“The wonderful thing about the Hartford Center is that they really understand and appreciate aging, and so they really are working to help other people understand and appreciate how you be healthy again and how you, even if you’re sick, help people to live a fuller life, and to understand different kinds of illnesses that people have at that age,” Gennaro said.
CSON professors Stewart Bond and Marie Boltz led the application process for membership in the National Hartford Center. Bond was a predoctoral scholar, and both professors were postdoctoral fellows funded by the John A. Hartford Foundation, the supporting legacy behind NHCGNE.
The John A. Hartford Foundation, founded in 1929, is a private philanthropic organization dedicated to improving the health of older Americans. It supports research and education in geriatrics, a branch of medicine related to the study of old age and aging. Through funding from the John A. Hartford Foundation, NHCGNE was established in 2012.
Bond, Boltz, and other nursing faculty worked on the application, identifying and describing the nursing faculty’s expertise and publications in gerontological nursing and explaining how gerontology had been incorporated into the nursing curriculum at the undergraduate and graduate levels at BC.
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