Melnyk named to two national healthcare groups

Dean Bernadette Melnyk, PhD, RN, of Arizona State University College of Nursing & Health Innovation has been appointed to the US Preventive Services Task Force. She joins two other nursing leaders on the task force:

• Carol Loveland-Cherry, PhD, RN, Professor and Executive Associate Dean, School of Nursing, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

• Lucy Marion, PhD, RN, Dean and Professor, School of Nursing, Medical College of Georgia, Augusta.

The task force was started in 1984 by the U.S. Public Health Service. Since 1998, it has been sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The task force conducts rigorous, impartial assessments of the scientific evidence for the effectiveness of a broad range of clinical preventive services, including screening, counseling, and preventive medications. Its recommendations are considered the "gold standard" for clinical preventive services.

The mission of the task force is to evaluate the benefits of individual services based on age, gender, risk factors for disease; make recommendations about which preventive services should be incorporated routinely into primary care for which populations; and identify a research agenda fro clinical preventive care.

Dean Bernadette Melnyk serves on other national healthcare groups, including the Institute of Medicine’s Roundtable on Evidence-based Medicine. Dean Melnyk was among five nursing leaders who served as members of the Healthcare Professionals Sector working group, one of nine sector groups convened by the Institute.

The Roundtable seeks to help transform the way evidence on clinical effectiveness is generated and used to improve health and health care and has set a goal that by 2020, 90 percent of clinical decisions will be supported by accurate, timely, up-to-date clinical information and will reflect the best available evidence. It also serves as a forum to facilitate the collaborative assessment and action around issues central to achieving its vision and goal.

The 20 physicians, pharmacists and nurses on the Healthcare Professionals Sector collaboratively developed a sectoral statement outlining the key challenges and opportunities for the sector and identifying a program of activities by which health professionals might contribute to achieving the Roundtable goal.

Other national nursing leaders who served on the sector task force included Linda Burns-Bolton, PhD, RN; Ada Sue Hinshaw, PhD, RN; Rona Levin, PhD, RN; and Pat Ford-Roegner, PhD, RN. Rae-Ellen Kavey, MD of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute coordinated the sector team.

Statements from all nine sectors were presented at a July IOM workshop and will be published as part of the IOM workshop summary due out in March 2008. Workshop discussions identified several priority transformational initiatives that will be taken up as part of Roundtable work.

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