By Laura Gasque
University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Nursing Associate Professor Martha Dawson, DNP, RN, FACHE (BSN 1976, MSN 1984), has received the President’s Award from the American Nurses Association. The award recognizes significant contributions to the ANA and nursing profession, specifically for efforts to promote diversity, equity and inclusion.
Dawson is President of the National Black Nurses Association Inc., and serves as co-lead on the National Commission to Address Racism in Nursing. The commission was launched in January 2021 by the ANA, NBNA, National Coalition of Ethnic Minority Nurse Associations and National Association of Hispanic Nurses. It brings together leaders and members from these four organizations, other nursing associations, schools of nursing, other health care organizations, and non-health care partners representing a broad sector of nurses, practice sites, ethnically diverse groups and regions across the United States.
“My goal is to help nurses and leaders become comfortable in addressing their organization’s climates, practices and policies that promote inequities, inequalities and lack of inclusion,” Dawson said. “When members of this profession are denied progression, promotions, equal access to resources and unequal pay because of their race and ethnicity, it is not enough for nurses to be voted the most trusted profession. We must become the most caring and fair in all aspects of our work. This is colleague-to-colleague work that requires self-reflection and self-acknowledgement, and real change.”
Dawson was one of seven nurse leaders recognized during a ceremony in June.
