A leading nursing and midwifery charity is launching a think tank focused on influencing health and care policy.
The Florence Nightingale Foundation’s (FNF) new ‘Policy and Influence Think Tank’ will aim to help ‘shape the health and care policy agenda and create a future where nursing and midwifery perspectives are valued’.
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The FNF said it also hoped its new think tank would help ensure that policies are informed by the ‘evidence, expertise and needs’ of nurses and midwives.
The think tank will sit within the charity’s academy, which offers leadership programmes and courses for nurses and midwives.
And as part of the new think tank, academy members will be offered the opportunity to ‘engage in policy and influencing work, and to develop political knowledge and influencing skills’, the FNF said.
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Professor Greta Westwood, chief executive of the FNF, said: ‘We have a strong and committed community of nurse and midwife leaders who are already making changes across every aspect of health and care.
‘Now, in our 90th anniversary year, we are drawing together that expertise and experience to strengthen our academy with the launch of the think tank. This will create a platform to increase our professions’ influence on health and care policy.’
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The director of the FNF Academy, Dr Natasha North, added that the new think tank would involve nursing and midwifery leaders in ‘generating solutions to the challenges of reforming and transforming health care’.
The ‘FNF Policy and Influence Think Tank’ will officially launch tomorrow as part of event focused on patient and staff safety.
