Kenyatta Elliott, MBA, MHA Even in the earliest weeks of the pandemic’s ascent, health systems nationwide began aggressively shoring up infrastructure to undertake what we knew would be one of the most prodigious health campaigns in American history: vaccinating millions of individuals as quickly as possible. What’s more, we (correctly)…

Tammy Simon, RN, MSN On May 27, 2021, I delivered what I thought would be my last weekly COVID-19 update to my health system. I entered the presentation with an expectation of joy; instead, I felt only exhaustion. I worried the end of one phase of COVID only presaged the…

Jennifer Brooks-Mason As a working mother, the image of a school bus elicits a flood of emotion — relief, joy, exhaustion, and most poignantly in these extraordinary times, gratitude. Prior to March 2020, school buses brought to mind the ceaseless shuttling of children to different schools with different schedules and…

Emily Moorhead, FACHE As a child, my parents often offered that familiar advice: “Treat people as you want to be treated.” Although simple, most of us have learned the hard way that that just isn’t how the world operates. Our origins, skin tone, clothing, occupation, and the company we keep…

Holly Beeman, MD, MBA I know four things to be true: I am not an expert. I do not have the answers. I want to learn. And I want to be an ally. These truths were forged in childhood experiences — my adolescence in Germany, as a teenager in Pakistan…

Ratan B. Milevoj, MBA From education to public safety, the COVID-19 pandemic revealed countless fractures in nearly every system in the nation. Perhaps most troubling, the global outbreak shed light on failures to protect our most essential workers. Nowhere was this failure more apparent than the shortage of life-saving personal…

Girlynda Gonzales, MSN, RN, CCRN, NEA-BC The grief for so many is real, but let us not be afraid to write the beauty of this time into history, too. Samantha Reynolds I’m a nurse and healthcare leader; 2020 was the hardest year of my life. In fact, every one of…