Howett selected for national LGBTQ expert panel

By SARAH GOLDTHRITE

Expert panels within the Academy play a pivotal role in developing new knowledge, fostering collaboration and shaping health care policies. AAN Fellows like Howett leverage their expertise to provide critical knowledge that transforms health policy and practice. The panels help to advance AAN’s mission to “improve health and achieve health equity by impacting policy through nursing leadership, innovation, and science.”

The primary goals of the panels include exploring trends and issues crucial to health care delivery and policy, recommending actions to the Board of Directors and the Fellowship, and preparing Board-approved policy aligned with the Academy's strategic directions.

The LGBTQ Health expert panel offers insights on matters impacting the health care of individuals in the LGBTQ community, advocates for increased involvement of nurses in LGBTQ health research and formulates policy suggestions aimed at mitigating health disparities related to sexual orientation or gender identity.

“The LGBTQ community is a hugely diverse population encompassing members from all socioeconomic groups, races, religions, and ethnicities, yet they all share a common vulnerability related to the risk for discrimination and stigmatization,” says Howett. “Nurses may be the single most trusted profession for giving reliably safe, unstigmatized and compassionate care as the embodied experience of queerness is uniquely intimate and a source of vulnerability for many individuals and families.

“It is essential that nurses are prepared to advocate for and give excellent, patient and family-centered, safe care to individuals and families who identify as non-cisgender and/or non-heteronormative.”

During her extensive experience in academia, including leadership, teaching and scholarship, Howett has worked to create inclusive classrooms and didactic content for students to understand the barriers to care in vulnerable populations.

Howett has served as associate dean for baccalaureate education at the University of Maryland, Baltimore School of Nursing; assistant dean for undergraduate education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst College of Nursing; director of accelerated programs at Emory University; and co-director of Southeastern Pediatric Health Education Unit in Atlanta.

In her role as associate dean for strategic initiatives in the SON, Howett will help to steer the School of Nursing towards its strategic program goals, encompassing academic, research and practice/service missions. This involves seamless coordination across academic programs and collaboration with community partners.

Howett was inducted as a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing in October.