Dean's Blog

Sara Crance and Yingyan Huang are often referred to as “Trailblazers.” They are going where no ASU Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation student has gone before. Frankly, there aren’t many like them in the nation.

As the pandemic continues into a second full year, I have to admit it’s been challenging to focus on personal resolutions. Typical goals like wanting to “eat better,” “save more money” or “travel more” seem almost too small when we’re all still facing a virus that continues taking its toll on many of our citizens and health care workers.

Everyone reading this post deserves a round of applause, because we made it through 2021! It took some hard work and determination, but here we stand at the end of another year, with 12 months of challenges that we have overcome in our rear view mirror, and a whole year of possibilities ahead.

I wanted to share some exciting professional news with you. I was recently named chief wellness officer for Arizona State University.

Campuses will soon be bustling with students again.

With all that’s required of educators, it’s not surprising that sometimes we get caught up in the day-to-day of teaching and lose sight of the incredible impact we have in the real world.

Edson College continues to make progress in addressing the pandemic of inequality.

“Let’s say there’s a day when nurses didn’t come to the hospital. It’s like, why do you even open?” Dr. Frank LoVecchio, an emergency medicine physician in Phoenix, spoke plain truth in the poignant short film “Death, Through a Nurse’s Eyes.” The recent documentary gives an ICU nurse’s-eye view of the pandemic’s winter surge at Valleywise Health Medical Center.

Arizona saw a major decrease in the number of pediatric influenza cases during the 2020-2021 flu season.

If this last year has taught us anything, it’s that effective modern health care needs to support everyone, not just a fortunate few.